Order 66: Fates of the Jedi
by ProofThatThisIsReal
Summary: This is an accumulation of scenes about Order 66 that were glazed over in the movies, given from the chosen Jedi or Clone Commander’s perspectives. It contains scenes not shown in the movie, and other bonus info about their perspectives. AU possibilities
1. Chapter I

**Title**: Order 66: Fates of the Jedi

**Author**: ProofThatThisIsReal

**Timeframe**: During Order 66

**Genre**: Emotion/Action

**Main Characters**: Anakin Skywalker/Vader, and other miscellaneous and well-known Jedi and Clone Commanders scattered throughout.

**Summary**: Basically, this is accumulation of scenes about Order 66 that were glazed over in the movies and books, given from the chosen Jedi or Clone Commander's perspectives. It contains scenes not shown in the movie, like the end raid on the Jedi Temple, and also little bonuses of information about each Jedi or Clone Commander throughout as Order 66 is given.

**Notes**: The fate of _some_ Jedi in these scenes _might_ turn AU…

**Disclaimer**: By the way, in case you didn't notice, my name happens to be ProofThatThisIsReal, not George Lucas, and guess what that means? Ironically enough, it means that I do _not_ own the Star Wars universe (imagine that)

Order 66: Fates of the Jedi

I

The rhythmic beat of marching footsteps echoed out into the Coruscanti night. All around him, the 501st legion of clone troopers, the most highly trained soldiers in the entire clone army, marched up the stone steps to the massive Jedi temple.

He was at the front, single-handedly leading the 501st's assault on the Jedi temple. A dark cape billowed out behind him, and his head was enshrouded in his Jedi hood. His lightsaber was held down low to his side, deactivated, and his knuckles where white against the cylindrical handle.

He, Anakin Skywalker-, _No, not anymore,_ he thought to himself. _My name is no longer Anakin Skywalker… My name is Vader._

The name brought pack a torrent of memories from less than an hour before, of him kneeling down in the chancellor's office and being christened the title _Darth Vader_, by someone he had once thought of as a friend and mentor - by someone that he now knew as Darth Sidious, Dark Lord of the Sith, his master.

His head twitched to the side at the painful thought, and he took another step up toward the Jedi temple, his face a continual snarl beneath the shadow of his hood.

_The Jedi did this to themselves, though! I am not to blame for their own inability to see the truth! I am not to blame for their corrupted system of ethics and laws! _

He let out a low, harsh breath as he climbed further up the stone steps, and then another lash of memories overtook him.

He saw himself swinging his sapphire blade up at the Jedi Master Mace Windu, and then as the azure blade slashed through the Master's arm in one clean motion. Windu had shouted something, some kind of indecipherable cry, and then Palpatine – no, Sidious – had raised his frail arms from where he lay against the shattered window frame, and blue tendrils of electricity and had suddenly sprouted from his fingertips, illuminating Windu with an electrical outpouring of dark side energy.

Windu had staggered back, unable to block the lethal branches of lightning that were smothering his body. Then Sidious had channeled the lightning outward so that it threw Windu from the building, out of the shattered transparisteel window frame, and into the cold blackness of night.

Vader shook his head, trying to dispel the memory, and as that on ended another one blossomed in its place. This memory was the last command that Sidious had given him.

_Do what must be done, Lord Vader…Destroy_ _the Jedi…_

All of this had happened not an hour ago, and now he was marching upon the Jedi Temple, the place where he had been raised, where he had befriended many people, where he had learned the ways of the force, with an armed legion of clone troopers at his back, ready to kill anything and everything inside.

A chill ran down Vader's spine that he couldn't suppress, and he tilted his head back up so that he could look upon the Jedi temple. Massive support columns climbed up the sides of the temple, and meticulous architecture had been ingrained into the temple's design. Colossal spires shot up from the structure's peak, and at it's base where Vader now stood, enormous illuminated statues of famous Jedi Masters stood tall and proud, watching over the temple like sentinels.

He passed these statues without a second glance, his mind missing the irony, and a few seconds later his foot left the stone stairs and stepped up onto the base of the Jedi Temple. A bright but narrow beam of light from the temple hit him dead on as he did so, but Vader didn't even hesitate as he continued marching forward.

With his feet hammering down to the ground in unison with the clone soldiers behind him, another, final thought flared into existence. It wasn't a long thought; in fact, it was only one word.

_Padmé_

All that he knew about her, all the memories and love he had for her, streaked through his mind in a quick, sudden flash of colors and emotions. And then, as the flare of emotions and memories threatened to overwhelm him in pain and joy, another memory forced its way into his mind.

_Be careful of the Jedi, Anakin. Only through me can you achieve a power greater than any Jedi… Learn to know the Dark Side of the Force, and you will be able to save your wife from certain death…_

Vader tilted his head downward slightly as his mind worked to dissect those words that Sidious had spoken to him not an hour earlier.

_Learn the power of the Dark Side, Anakin. The power to save Padmé_.

Another long second dragged by, and then Vader raised his head sharply, throwing back his hood as he did so. The long shadow that the temple's light had cast on him was now stretched out far beyond the steps that he had entered from, giving him the impression of a colossal beast from where he stood framed in the doorway of the temple.

In front of him, and circling the balcony above, a line of four Jedi Knights and two Jedi Masters stood waiting, lightsabers already drawn and lit in their hands. They had apparently felt his approach through the force, and since they were the nearest to the temple's doorway, they had come to try and defend what they could of it.

Vader knew most of them. No, _he_ did not know most of them, _Anakin Skywalker_ had known most of them. Anakin Skywalker had considered some of them friends, having trained together, and he had held many of them in great respect.

Vader's mouth curved up into a feral sneer, and he pressed the ignition button on his lightsaber's blade. A dark, sapphire beam of light erupted from the hilt, and he kept it held down at his side, motionless, every bit intimidating as the army of clone troopers behind him.

The entire 501st legion halted in unison as he did this, and they moved their gun angles around so that they were all trained on the nearby Jedi. The room was deathly still, and the only noise around them was the monotonous humming of lightsaber blades.

Vader's sneer curved up even more, and his eyes faded into yellow. "This is for you, Padmé," he said to himself in almost a whisper. "This is for you…"


	2. Chapter II

So, for everyone reading this, you've probably already read the first chapter and apparently liked it enough to continue reading. (Though a review might help a little if you feel up to it. After all, writing isn't much fun if you can't hear what other people say about your stories.) Anyway, hope you enjoy this one, though I hold it in slightly less regard than the first one. Through chapter five and onward, though, I think the story really begins to pick up speed and intensity. (and chapter nine is one of the coolest, so far) Anyway, hope you enjoy...

* * *

II

"Sir, all Separatist forces are being driven back to Pau City's inner region, and our AT-TE's are making quick work of the lingering Separatist artillery. Dropships have just started to arrive, and they're quickly reinforcing our troops."

Commander Cody nodded approvingly toward his lieutenant, dismissing him, and then turned his attention back to the battle scene before him.

It was chaos around Utapau's central city, Pau City, and bright flashes of crimson and sapphire filled the air as Republic and Separatist forces exchanged fire. Dropships were constantly landing in the background, providing covering fire for nearby clones and unloading reinforcements. The massive Republic AT-TE walkers that had been brought in were unloading their main guns into the sides of the city's colossal sinkholes, where Separatist forces had barricaded themselves atop perches in the massive cliff. The ruble from these blasts was constantly crashing to the ground in huge chunks of rock and gravel, littering the battlefield below where Republic and Separatist ground forces were engaged.

Utapaun dragon cavalry only added to the chaos, with their primitive force pikes contrasting sharply amongst the many streaks of laser fire.

Cody raised his specialized binoculars and looked out across the battlefield, focusing in on the frontlines of clone troopers that were slowly but steadily battling their way forward. Despite the Separatists having had the time to barricade themselves within the city, the clones were more highly trained, and they were making quick work of any enemy defenses they met.

A nearby explosion that rained small pebbles onto the Clone Commander prompted Cody to lower his binoculars, and he turned around as a deep, resonating thunder approached him from behind.

Jedi General Obi-Wan Kenobi was gallivanting towards him on one of the massive varactyl dragonmounts, looking for all the universe as some kind of hero in a holodrama that was ready to save the Republic.

Cody suppressed a smirk as he strolled up next to the massive dragonmount. The lizard sprayed up a cloud of dust as it halted beside him, and as the dust settled Cody began taking off his helmet.

"Commander," Obi-Wan shouted through the drone of background noise. "Did you relay the message to Coruscant about Grievous's death?"

Cody snapped to attention and saluted. "As ordered, sir."

Kenobi nodded and turned around to survey the battle behind him for a second. He then turned back to Cody and said, "Good. Now, contact your troops and tell them to head up to the higher levels. It will be easier to rout any remaining Separatist forces that way."

"Very good, sir," Cody responded. And then, as the Jedi General turned away from him, he remembered the cylindrical metal object that he had found earlier and was now attached to his belt.

"Oh, and by the way?" Cody said, bringing the general's attention back to him as he unclipped the lightsaber from his belt. "I think you might be needing this…"

Kenobi made a face that looked something like a mix between embarrassment and elation, and then he took his lightsaber from Cody's hand and said awkwardly, "Um… Thank you… And let's keep this between you and me, shall we…? Now," his face returned to composure, "let's get a move on; we've got a battle to win here."

With that, the Jedi General reeled up on his mount and took off, heading up one of the many ledges that lined the edge of the great sinkhole.

Cody watched him go for a second, placing his helmet back on his head, and then felt a silent buzzing from a concealed compartment within his armor. Cody frowned and reached into the hidden compartment, bringing out a channel-secure comlink that was reserved for only the commander in chief's contact frequency.

Cody pressed the button and a miniature holographic figure appeared on his outstretched hand. The figure was robed in dark cloaks, to where he was almost indistinguishable, but Cody recognized that only the commander in chief – the chancellor – knew about this frequency, so this must be him, just in new attire.

"Commander Cody," the hologram spoke, a dark, malicious voice that sounded something like the offspring of what General Grievous and a rancor would sound like. "The time has come… Execute Order 66."

Cody bowed his head, more out of military training and instinct then of comprehension, and said, "It will be done, my lord."

Cody closed the comlink and put it back into the hidden compartment as his mind weaved around the true meaning or what the chancellor had just ordered him to do. Order 66 was the order that commanded, basically:_ the Jedi have attempted to overthrow the Republic, and have now been deemed to be taken out by lethal force._

Cody did not take any relish in what he had just been ordered to do, for General Kenobi had become a good friend of his throughout the past few months as they fought together, side by side. But, then again, the idea to disobey this order didn't even come to mind, because he was a clone, and he had been trained to obey orders since birth, no matter what.

Slowly, he tilted his head back up to look at Kenobi's rapidly diminishing form as he and his dragonmount bounded across the sinkhole's outer ledge.

Cody then turned around to face the clone troopers around him, and the AT-TE beside them that had been providing covering fire for the dropships. They all knew about the order, as it had been relayed to each of their helmet comlinks the moment he had received it, and they where now surely waiting for him to give the order to open fire.

With a frown, he muttered to himself inside the confinds of his helmet, "would it have been too much to ask for the order to have come in _before_ I gave I gave him back the _bloody_ lightsaber?"

Then, slowly, he turned back around and motioned his hands toward the bouncing figure of Obi-Wan and his dragon mount, still clambering along the edge of the sinkhole. As he did this, he said, without hesitation, "Blast them."

The AT-TE had already locked in on the Jedi General, anticipating Cody's orders, and as soon as he had given the order, the massive gun mount opened up with a bolt of blue plasma.

The blue bolt shot a streak through the air toward the Jedi General, and less than a second later a bright flash exploded from where Obi-Wan and his dragonmount had been, leaving a crumbling hole in the side of the sinkhole.

Cody squinted his eyes from the intensity of the light, despite his helmet's visual polarizers already having cut down the glare. As his eyes refocused, he saw the burning chunks of dragon meat exploding out into the depths of the sinkhole, and a small mountain of stone and rock crumbling down after them.

Cody grimaced, and then keyed his comlink. "It looks like the lizard took the worst of the hit. We're going to have to deploy the seekers, all of them. I know the General more than most people, and I know that he has an almost _insistent_ way of not being killed."

He starred down into the ocean's basin, the once-still frame of water being shattered as chunks of rock and lizard crashed into its surface.

"I want to see a body."


	3. Chapter III

III

Ki-Adi-Mundi slashed his blue lightsaber to the side, deflecting a red blaster bolt and sending it streaking back towards the droid that had fired it. The droid stuttered for a second as the bolt dug into its chest, and then it toppled over as static sprouted from the gash.

Ki-Adi-Mundi, Jedi Master and Jedi General for the current mission on Mygeeto, whipped his lightsaber back around and sent another bolt streaking back towards his attacker. The Jedi Master was a Cerean, with an elongated head and a snow-white beard and mustache. His dark brown Jedi robes flapped around his legs constantly as he batted back the onslaught of droids that were before him, and he was showing his skill with the lightsaber against droids that would only live seconds to know of it.

Mundi was in charge of a contingent of clone troopers, headed by clone commander Bacara, and the thousands of troopers behind him were expertly keeping the tide of Separatist droids at bay as he himself deflected their frequent shots in the front lines. Both sides had been trading blows for hours, now, and they had both sustained considerable losses.

Mundi deflected yet another volley of shots from a super battle droid, and then darted behind a ridge of rubble that provided him with cover. The twenty-or-so clones in the immediate vicinity behind him, including Bacara himself, did the same, and they all hunkered down behind the rubble for a few seconds as they caught their breath.

Carefully, Mundi raised his head and looked around, scanning the battlefield. He and the clones behind him were situated upon a narrow section of a bridge that connected two greater upraised landmasses. The landscape all around them had been transformed into mass rubble by the unrelenting battering of artillery fire against each side, and what had once been homes and businesses had now turned into smoking debris fields.

Though the clones and Separatists had been clawing at each other for hours, neither side had taken much of an advantage. The sky had been smeared black by the ash from the continuous onslaught, and with explosions and snow flurries littering what little clear sky was left, the whole world looked like it had been cast into a continuous twilight, lit only by the frequent explosions from artillery.

Mundi drew his head back down, silently cursing the Separatists, and then let out a long breath as he squatted against the side of the rubble. The breath turned to vapor before his eyes, transformed by Mygeeto's icy climate.

"That's the one good thing about being a droid," Mundi muttered to himself as he looked back to the fight again, wiping off the flurries of snow that had coalesced on his shoulder. "You never have to worry about being cold."

He suppressed a shiver as he wrapped himself around in his brown cloak, shaking the water off of it, and then turned back to Bacara. The droid commander was waiting patiently, the twenty-or-so soldiers behind him doing likewise.

"Commander," Mundi said, his voice dry in the frigid climate. "We need to end this battle _now_, or else we might be stuck here _much_ longer than we intended. I suggest that during the next break in fire, this small group," he motioned, indicating the clone troopers around him, "rush into their position and try to take out their artillery so that we can move the rest of the men in. Are you clear?"

"Yes, sir," Bacara saluted crisply.

"Good, and maybe we'll try to-"

Mundi was cut off as a bright red streak from a turbolaser blast shot over where they where hunkered down and headed straight toward one of the AT-TE's. Mundi's face turned to sadness as the bolt collided with the AT-TE in an explosion that shook the entire bridge and sent the crumpled remains of the massive tank-like walker high into the air.

"Change of plans," Mundi said through gritted teeth as he turned back to Bacara. "We move now; I don't want to see something like that happening every couple of minutes."

"Yes, sir," Bacara responded, clearly relieved at being able to do something, and he motioned with his hands something to his squad, obviously relaying the order to them through his helmet's comlink.

"And here we go," Mundi muttered to himself as he turned around and jumped out from behind the ridge of rubble, igniting his lightsaber in the same motion.

A streak of red almost caught him off guard as he leapt out, but he managed at the last second to swivel his lightsaber around and bat the laser bolt into the ground. Another volley of bolts then came, but this time Mundi was ready, and he skillfully intercepted each strike, sending them back to their owners. Super and regular battle droids alike fell beneath Mundi's deflections, and a path was being carved through the lingering droids ranks still on the bridge.

Mindi rushed forward a few more steps, deflecting another red bolt as he ran, and then turned around to his clones. Bacara and his company of twenty clones were right behind him, carefully weaving around the rubble in their pathway and picking droids off with practiced ease.

"Come on," Mindi yelled, urging them onward. He held his lightsaber up high above his head, and then rushed forward, readying himself into a stance that would defend the clone troopers from any incoming fire.

Mindi ran for two more steps, and then heard a scuffling of feet behind him. Perplexed, he slowly turned around, and as he did so he sensed a sudden sense of foreboding through the force.

Before him, the twenty clones that Bacara had been leading were all gathered around him, forming a kind of semicircle from where they stood. At their head stood Bacara, the yellow insignia on his armor marking him the commander and making him stand out more than the rest of them.

Every single clone, including Bacara himself, had their blaster rifles raised at their shoulders and leveled on the Jedi Master, their sights trained on the Jedi's head.

Quick and sudden thoughts entered Mundi's mind as he himself stood looking shocked before them. _Why would the clones turn on me? Why aren't they following order? …Have they been given these orders? …Who would-_

That was as far as his thoughts got, for at that instant Bacara opened fire, and a blast of blue arched toward him.

Mundi reacted out of instinct, waving his lightsaber up, and the blue blade caught the blast on its tip, sending it ricocheting back toward the block of clone troopers. The shot took out one of the soldiers on the far left, and then the rest of the clones opened fire.

A wave of blue bolts raced towards Mundi, and the Jedi Master desperately waved his lightsaber around him in a circular arc, trying to block the bolts. The first blue plasma volley to reach him was deflected into the charred sky, and the second Mundi sent back at another clone, where it found its mark in his chest plating.

Then a third collided into Mundi's left shoulder, and the Jedi Master let out a strangled gasp as his shoulder was flung back. The force of the impact caused him to swerve, and this prevented his lightsaber from deflecting the next shot as it hammered into Mundi's right elbow.

Mundi let out another cry of pain as his lightsaber dropped from his hands, and then the rest of the blue plasma bolts impacted upon him, most colliding into his chest or legs.

As the plasma bolts found their marks, Mundi fell backwards, the Jedi Master's hand still outstretched, trying to call his lightsaber to him in some futile attempt to deflect the shots. Then another bolt caught his shoulder, and this sent him spinning around to the ground where he crashed face-down into the powdery snow.

A second later, darkness overtook the famed Jedi Master, and all pain ceased.


	4. Chapter IV

Well, this scene was pretty hard to write due to the movie showing only about ten seconds total to describe it. Also, the fact that this Jedi Master hasn't appeared in any of the other movies also adds up to making it hard to write. This has made it one of my more disliked scenes out of the ten or eleven that I have written, but it's still pretty good, considering. Anyway, hope you enjoy it, despite its brevity.

* * *

IV

Jedi Master Stass Allie's speeder bike zoomed through the Saleucamian plains, following a single but direct path on her patrol. She was human, with dark tan skin, and she wore the traditional dark brown and light brown combination of Jedi robes, as well as a Tholoth headdress atop her head. Her robes were fluttering out behind her from the speed with which she was moving, and the crackle of wind was a constant noise in her ears.

Stass sighed as she looked out at the landscape around her. Saleucami was an arid world, with only a dim light that was cast onto it from its far-off sun. Oases' had littered what she had seen of the planet so far, and the field that she was now patrolling was no exception. Huge, bulbous trees also laid claim to the planet's individuality, and the many rolling hills that weaved out into the distance were dotted with them.

Stass turned her head from the scenery and looked to her sides, seeing two more speeders traveling alongside hers'. A single clone trooper sat atop each speeder, flanking her sides, and they both wore customized armor meant to enhance their resistance to blaster bolts. On her left was Commander Neyo, and to her right was his lieutenant. They were her reinforcements.

Stass sighed at the thought and turned forward once again. The thought had brought back memories from when the republic had not been at war, from when she would never have needed to have escorts follow her around to protect her from dispassionate and unemotional droids that had been ordered to kill them.

Stass bowed her head down as her mind drifted. _If only this war could have somehow of been avoided. Too many friends have been lost; too many Jedi have been lost… Too many _lives_ have been lost, period. And Grievous…_ Her mouth turned into a scowl as she thought the name.

_If it weren't for Grievous, Adi Gallia, my cousin, would not be dead… That monster is machine enough to not care about killing, and he is living enough to know cruelty. _She shook her head again as she looked up and narrowed her eyes, trying to keep the wind from stinging her face. _This war is evil…_ _All war is evil…_ _We should not have to fight against things that don't even care if we live or die, and that only care about following orders…_

Lost in her thoughts, Stass never noticed the clone commanders flanking her motion to each other to pull back.

She was still looking up ahead of her, turning her thoughts around in her head, trying to find some reason for why all of this had to happen, when a crimson plasma bolt jolted into the end of her speeder bike, causing the bike to swerve wildly.

Stass instantly came out of her stupor as the bolt hit, and at the same time she reflexively grabbed at the speeder's controls, attempting to sturdy the now-wobbling craft. She cast a look behind her, fear etched into her face, and she saw both Commander Neyo and his lieutenant shooting at her from behind, their ruby blaster bolts arching through the air towards her.

_What?!_

Stass quickly turned back around, her face becoming sweat-stricken as the wind flapped her cloak up and around her face. Another red plasma bolt streaked passed her right side, narrowly missing her head, and then her body was jerked forward as another bolt collided with the back of the speeder, sending a plume of charcoal smoke into the air.

Stass frantically grasped the controls, trying to pull the speeder bike back from its wobbly decent. But her attempts were futile, she realized, as she saw that the speeder's steering had been shot out. It was at that moment of realization that the bike abruptly began gaining speed and altitude, and suddenly it was shooting off sideways, towards one of the numerous oases' that dotted the area.

The craft's speed kept it moving across the small patch of water without teetering more than a few inches to either side, and then it reached the hill on the other side of the oasis and shot upward, gaining speed all the while. Less than a second later, the small speeder bike shot off the top ledge of the hill and into the air, its decent heading it straight towards one of the huge bulbous-like trees that covered the landscape.

As Stass sat helpless in the seat of her speeder while it zoomed toward her imminent crash, she desperately tried to cast herself out into the force, trying to immerse herself in a force energy bubble that would protect her from the impending crash.

But she was more of a healer than a manipulator of telekinesis, and the force of the coming impact would be much too great for her to try and block. As she realized this, Stass let herself fall back into the force, becoming perfectly in tune with it's existence.

A second later, a luminous explosion erupted from the giant bulbous tree, and the speeder bike shattered into a fiery sphere of metal and flames that danced across the dim surroundings, scattering durasteel chunks into the surrounding landscape as the Jedi Master Stass Allie left reality.


	5. Chapter V

* * *

V

The acklay came out of nowhere, and only a danger sense through the force warned Aayla of its sudden arrival. She instantly dodged to the side as the creature's huge foremost pincer plunged into the ground where she had stood a second before, splaying dirt high into the air.

Aayla took two more steps back as she unclipped the two lightsabers at her belt and glared up at the acklay. Then, in the same motion she used to spin the two handles into her hands, she ignited both blades with a snap-hiss and then swung them up in front of her, readying herself to fend off another attack from the towering acklay.

The blue and green blades of her lightsabers both cast a pale light across the acklay's greenish features, illuminating an almost spider-like reptilian with six huge claws for legs and an angled head-dome curving backwards into the air.

Aayla grimaced as she remembered having to deal with monsters earlier, and then, out of the corner of her eyes, she caught the sight of two more acklays charging out of Felucia's diverse and flower-like fauna, heading straight towards the regiment of clone trooper that she was in command of.

Before she could think of what to do next, the acklay in front of her suddenly snapped its head to the side, letting out an echoing, high-pitched screech, and then plunged its pincher down at her again.

Aayla dodged to the side as the pincher plunged into the ground, and she then brought her blue lightsaber around her body in an arc. The blade cut through the acklay's flesh like a vibroblade through butter, and the acklay let out an even higher high-pitched screech as the cauterized pincer fell to the ground.

The creature staggered back a few steps, holding its half-amputated pincer up like a hurt leg, and then it turned its attention back to Aayla. Its gaze was murderous, and through the force, Aayla could sense the beast's uncontrollable intent to kill, no matter what the cost.

"Uh-oh," Aayla whispered as the acklay charged forward again.

The beast came at her as if berserk, with no care for its own well-being and the only desire in its small animal mind being to kill the one who had maimed it. Aayla jumped forward to the ground underneath the acklay as it charged, and she felt the sudden vibrations through dirt as the acklay laid its good pincher into ground just behind her.

Aayla rolled onto her back as the acklay let out a shriek of frustration, and she then lashed out sideways with her lightsabers at one of the acklay's legs. The green and blue lightsaber beams both slashed into the leg at the joint, sending a smoldering leg-claw to the ground. The acklay screeched in pain again as its body tilted to it's side, misbalanced by the loss of yet another leg.

As the pained screech began to die away, Aayla flipped up from here back and onto her feet so that she was standing just under the giant green reptilian. Grimacing, she thrust both of her arms upward, and the blue and green blades of her lightsabers impaled straight into the creature's unarmored belly.

The acklay made the pained, high-pitched shriek yet again, but the screech soon turned into a kind of hissing as the acklay stumbled to its side. Aayla held the lightsabers into the creature's stomach a second longer, and then hit the deactivation switch. Both lightsaber beams vanished, and Aayla quickly jumped out from under the acklay as the creature began to totter toward its injured side.

The acklay made another hissing noise as if trying to call for mercy, its claw-like legs stumbling to support itself, and then it toppled over onto the ground with a resonant thud.

Aayla slowly picked herself off the ground, keeping her eyes glued on the now-still acklay. After confirming that it was dead through the force, she quickly wiped the grime from her arms, and then gazed over at the clone troopers behind and down the hill from her.

The clones had already taken down one of the acklays that had charged them, and it now laid dead against one of the Felucian flower-like trees. The remaining acklay was being pounded by the clone troopers blasters, and its shrieks filled the air like an alarm as it stumbled around aimlessly, trying to get into striking distance of one of the clone troopers.

It was at that moment that, with a grind of machinery, a sudden blue bolt jumped into life from behind Aayla and streaked towards the doomed acklay. The creature's high-pitched shrieks filled the air for a second longer as it was illuminated in a bright sapphire light, and then it toppled to the ground, a charred area now marking its chest where the plasma bolt had hit it.

Aayla turned to her side from where the bolt had originated and found the massive AT-TE armored tank that had been brought along for this mission lowering its main canon, smoke still trailing from the barrel.

Stepping down from the main controls of the AT-TE was a clone trooper with yellow markings, displaying his rank as commander of the clone forces. A yellow kama was wrapped around his waste that added to his prestige, and across his shoulder he carried a slightly-customized military blaster rifle. A night-time visor was attached to his helmet, and across his left shoulder was a leather pauldron, signifying his expertise in combat.

The commander approached Aayla hurriedly, and then took off his helmet and tucked it under his arm. Like all clones, he physically resembled the bounty hunter Jango Fett, the host who they had been cloned from, in near perfection, except for the distinctive scar across his left upper eyebrow that he had sustained in combat. But his spirit - Aayla thought - was what differentiated him from the rest of his brothers.

"General, are you alright?" he asked hurriedly as he came up beside her, concern etched across his face.

"Yes, Commander Bly, I'm fine." She said, smiling at his show of concern. She and Bly went back a long way, working together since the beginning of the war, and they had both saved each other's lives in numerous situations before. Over the months of fighting side by side, the two of them had formed a close bond of friendship, despite their very different situations.

Bly cocked his head to the side and asked, in a slightly commical voice, "Are you sure, General, because you sure don't look it."

Aayla looked down at herself and sighed. The bottom half of her torso was covered in grime from where she had fallen earlier, and the shallow lacerations across her knees and ankles had turned her legs into a lacerated patchwork of small scars.

Aayla made a grimace and began wiping herself off as best she could, her lekku swinging to her side as she bent down. Aayla Secura was a Twi'lek, a humanoid species with a lekku of two tentacles that hung out from the back of their head. Her skin was a deep blue hue that was just a shade lighter than her lightsaber, and she wore long brown pants and a dark brown top just above her stomach. Her figure was lithe and athletic, being a Jedi, and she had been elevated to the rank of Jedi Master only shortly after the Clone Wars had begun.

Aayla stood back up, wiping her hands together to shake off the persistent dirt, and then looked back at Bly. "How many men did we loose, Commander?"

Bly's mouth curved downward, a classic Fett grimace, and he said, "We lost two men, both to the first acklay which caught us by surprise, and three more were injured by the second acklay. We were able to take the first one out by sheer force of numbers, after we had recovered from our surprise, and the second one I had the AT-TE take out. And the third…" he made a gesture toward the acklay closest to them, the one missing two legs and that was now slumped against the ground. "Well, I think you know what happened to that one better than I do."

Aayla's eyebrows lifted as she tilted her head to the side, her lekku responding accordingly, and she then looked down the hill she was standing atop toward the group of clone troopers that had just taken out the two acklays. They were now assembling into groups, taking care of the wounded, and a few were busy setting up preliminary boundary zones around the groups so as to ward off any further acklay attacks.

"This is the third acklay encounter we've run into, Bly," Aayla said, her gaze still locked on the clone troopers amassing below her. "This accursed world is full of them, and along with these carnivorous plants that make traversing these jungles so hard, it could take us another couple of long hours before we reach the Separatist encampment."

She shook her head again and looked out at the diverse jungles around her. Felucia's fauna was more flower-like than tree-like, and the many huge mushrooms and blooms that covered the landscape added a pungent smell to the air around her. Many of the plants were carnivorous, and they had adapted to fight off predators almost as well as predators themselves had adapted to live amongst them. The world's fauna was filled with many diverse colors, with splashes of bright blue and yellow shaping the landscape into an almost sea-like forest of flowers. The life-energy provided by all these living things rendered the world rich in the living-force, and the humongous flowers and plants, as well as the natural predators of Felucia, had made colonizing the world hard. Thus, few settlements had been established across its surface, and only the well-maintained ones had survived for long.

Aayla continued her gaze upward, where her eyes met the clouded yellow sky. The rich plant-life of the world produced pollen rapidly, and this added a slight yellow tint to the sky that made it appear as if the world were in a continual dusk.

Aayla continued starring at the sky for a second longer, and then turned back around to face Bly. He was still waiting patiently beside her, his helmet tucked under his arm and his rifle still over his shoulder.

"We should head out now, before it gets any darker," Aayla said, her voice clam. "If we can take the Separatist encampment before nightfall, we might have a chance to stop them from poisoning the water supply."

"Yes, ma'am," Bly saluted, and then thumbed his comlink open to issue the command.

As the AT-TE beside her came to life and began slowly grinding forward, Aayla matched pace with it and started walking toward where their intelligence had placed the Separatist encampment. She sensed Bly following behind her, as well as about ten other clones that had been manning the AT-TE's auxiliary guns, and she figured that they were most likely delivering a status report to him personally. As Aayla continued to walk, her mind drifted back to her mission.

_I hope Barriss Offee will be able to hold out against the Separatist forces for just a little longer. She has been fighting this battle for almost a week, now, and we only arrived a day ago. Hopefully, once this Separatist base is destroyed, we can combine our clone forces and both go to Kashyyyk together to assist Master Yoda and Master Vos in driving out the invading Separatist forces. _

As Aayla walked, lost in her thoughts, she came up to one of the massive flower blooms that littered Felucia. The bloom was a brilliant turquoise that stood out from the many other plants, even by Felucia's diverse color standards, and the huge pistols that sprouted from its center wavered in the slight breeze.

Aayla stopped under the flower's massive petal, gazing up at the intricate latticework of veins, and she sensed the dozen-or-so clone troopers behind her stop a few meters behind away. She stood starring at the petal for another long second, taking in its beauty and wonder, and then sensed something through the force.

It was just the slightest tremor of something that she felt, meander its way through the force like a sandworm, and had she not been completely in tune with everything around her, she would surely have missed it.

But still, it had been distinctive enough to be a warning of some kind, and all of a sudden, she knew that something was wrong.

Aayla's eyebrows crossed as she hooked her thumbs into her belt, trying to figure out what she had felt. She stood like that for a second, still facing the giant bloom, and then said, "Bly… It's gotten quiet all of a sudden…" Her voice was soft as she spoke, and her eyes were locked on the turquoise petal above her head. "Do you think it could be droids?"

"No," was Bly's terse reply, coming almost too quickly.

Aayla's eyebrows slanted inward even further as she recognized Bly's behavior. That distinctive shortness to an answer, a hanging dread in the back of his voice, was all characteristic of when the commander had been ordered to do something that he did not care for. She had been with him long enough to come to know that about him.

Then, still facing the bloom, Aayla heard the muffled sounds of blaster rifles being steadied and aimed, a sound that she had become all-too accustomed to during the war when she had been on the other side of the clone troopers, giving them the orders to open fire. As this happened, the lingering tremor of apprehension that she had felt through the force exploded into a full-blown danger-sense, and Aayla's head shot around.

Her eyes instantly met the twelve clones surrounding her, all pointing their blaster rifles at her chest. She couldn't see the clone's expressions because they all wore helmets, all except for Bly.

Aayla looked into his eyes and saw the pain and sorrow for what he was about to do, as well as the crooked downward grimace that he wore in the most extreme of situations. But even as she was about to word the silent plead of '_why'_, she realized that his loyalty lied ultimately with the Republic, and that he would carry out his orders no matter what.

As Bly pressed the trigger of his rifle, sending a blue streak of plasma streaking towards her, the force instinctively guided Aayla's right arm up from her belt, grabbing her blue lightsaber in the process, and ignited it in the same clean motion as she twisted her body around to face the twelve clones surrounding her.

The sapphire blade sprang to life with a snap-hiss as the blue plasma bolt collided into it and then went ricocheting off into the dusk sky. Bly's face looked confused for a second as his shot went sailing into the clouds, and then the rest of the clones surrounding Aayla opened fire with their blaster rifles.

Aayla's left hand called to her green lightsaber as she swung her blue one around in an outward semicircle, sending three more of the deadly bolts dancing off into the sky. Her other lightsaber then entered her left hand, and she ignited the emerald blade right as another volley of bolts came at her from the side.

Aayla swung the two blades down, sending the bolts back at her attackers, and then brought both of her lightsabers up into a frenzied spin around her body, trying desperately to block the incoming bolts. She had no time to think of the _how_ or _why_ about why the clones were shooting at her, and all she could see for the moment were the sheets of blue and green that her lightsabers cast as they arched across her vision, deflecting volley after volley of plasma bolts.

She spun her lightsabers around to her sides, sending another volley of bolts back at her attackers, and then heard a distinctive cry as a bolt apparently found its mark in one of the clones. Then she felt a sudden burn sprout up from her left shin, and she knew that she had been grazed by one of the bolts herself.

Aayla took a step back with her good leg, coming down lower to the ground as she did so. Another bolt that she deflected with her lightsaber impacted into one of the clones, and he went down instantly as the bolt burned a black circle into his chest. Then, as Aayla spun her emerald-green lightsaber high over her head while intricately twirling her sapphire one out in front of her, another bolt found its way through her defenses and burned into the side of her abdomen.

Aayla let out a short cry as she staggered back again, now literally leaning against the huge bloom behind her. Only by an act of sheer willpower – or perhaps it was the force - did she continue to twirl her two lightsabers around her body in wide arcs, deflecting most of the bolts away from her. Her teeth were gritted together from the immense pain that she felt burning through her stomach and leg, and her face was lined with sweat.

_There are too many of them, and they're too close for me to deflect everything… I won't be able to keep this up for much longer…_

As this thought entered Aayla's mind, she abruptly realized that she had finally recovered enough from the shock of seeing her clone troopers firing at her to think clearly again.

_Think… That's what I have to do to get out of this; I have to think…_

Aayla' twirled her blue and green blades around her head again, blocking yet another volley of blue plasma bolts, and then glanced up at the turquoise petal above her. At that exact moment, through the force or through some other kind of knowledgeable entity, she knew exactly what she had to do.

Swiping her emerald lightsaber around her head in yet another arc to deflect the continuous onslaught of blaster bolts, she reached forward with her right hand while reaching out to the force. The force came to her instantly, and she channeled it's power towards the huge petal that hung above her.

The tip of the massive petal responded instantly to her command by sprawling down to the ground, draping her in a veil of turquoise and in doing so shielding her from the barrage of plasma bolts. The clone trooper's rifles, while powerful against infantry, were next to useless when used individually against Felucia's thick predator-adapted plant-life, and the many blaster bolts now impacting into the turquoise petal were merely burning a short way through the petal before dissipating.

Aayla took a deep breath, calming herself with the force and easing her pain as she stood up behind the huge petal. She heard Bly shout out a muffled command to his clone troopers on the other side of the petal to 'concentrate their fire', and suddenly the many scattered blaster bolts impacting into the turquoise petal became concentrated near the center. The bright turquoise of the plant then began to turn dark and more muddied as the blaster bolts burned their way through the thick flesh of the leaf.

Aayla knew that she would have only seconds before the plant was completely burned through, and she knew that she had to do something. Drawing on the force to focus herself, she cast herself outward, feeling her surroundings through the force. She could feel the clones on the other side of the petal, blasting mercilessly at it to get to her, and she could feel their individual presences as sparks of light with a determined mind-set behind them. She could also feel exactly where they stood.

Aayla's eyes flashed open just as the charred hole in the petal opened up, and a bolt of blaster fire came through it to bat harmlessly into the dirt at her feet. Then, with a surge of force energy, Aayla sprinted forward, her blue and green lightsabers drawn down behind her like wings.

As soon as she came to the side of the petal, she suddenly jumped up into the air, twisting her body sideways as she did so, and then lashed out with her two lightsabers at the petal's side.

The blue and green blades sliced through the petal effortlessly, and Aayla continued her twisting jump through the hole she had just created and out onto the other side of the petal, where two clone troopers stood. Both clone troopers were caught completely unawares, their rifles still leveled on the hole in the petal that they had been concentrating their fire on a second ago, and Aayla's emerald blade decapitated them both in a single, sweeping motion.

Even before the two clones had hit the ground, their colleagues were already twisting around in their position and beginning to line up their blasters rifles on the now exposed Jedi.

Aayla's sapphire blade arched upward as a shot streaked towards her head, and she sent the blue plasma bolt arching back towards the clone that had fired it. Even as the clone took the bolt straight to the chest, Aayla was lunging left, to the next nearest clone, and she impaled him with her emerald lightsaber straight through his stomach.

The five remaining clones then shot simultaneously at the Jedi Master, and Aayla ducked below four of the shots and sent the fifth racing back toward the clone that had fired it. He went down like the others had as a charred circle appeared on his white armor, and then Aayla was darting forward again, jumping up as she came within striking distance of the last four clones.

She deflected two bolts from midair as she jumped, her face lined with sweat and her lekku flying out behind her, and as she landed she swung her lightsaber around her body in a straight arc, towards one of the clones. The clone's upper and lower body fell to the ground separate of each other, and then Aayla turned back to the other three clones.

In front of her was Bly, his face a mix of outrage and shock, and to his side were two other clones, their rifles still moving to get a clear shot at her. Instead of cutting the three clones down in one swift pattern, as she could easily have done, Aayla instead held her right hand up, palm out, and let loose a wall of force energy.

The force push rocketed the three troopers backwards, towards the now-unmanned AT-TE, and they collided against it with the sound of synthetic armor impacting against durasteel.

As the immediate threat left her presence, Aayla cast a careful glance around her, spotting the rest of the clone regiment still at the base of the hill she was on. They were all racing up the hill towards her, apparently having heard the distant firefight, and though they were out of range, Aayla wasn't going to take any chances, and she quickly sprinted towards the unmanned AT-TE where she had thrown the three clones.

As she got closer, slowing her step sizes, a sudden warning sense sprouted to life in the back of her mind, and she reflexively turned and swung her two lightsabers around her body. The two blades reached the blue plasma bolt just in time, just before it would have struck her face, and she sent the bolt flying back towards the clone that had fired it, one of the ones that had been thrown against the AT-TE. The bolt struck him hard in the chest, and a jagged circular blotch appeared in his armor as he fell backwards.

Aayla then spun around, expecting to find the other two clones right behind her and about to open fire, but all she saw was them both slumped against the side of one of the AT-TE's legs. She slowly approached them, searching the force for any sign of danger, but found nothing. She looked to the helmeted one and saw that he was motionless; his spine had, most likely, cracked upon impact with the hard durasteel AT-TE.

She then looked to the one without the helmet, Commander Bly, and saw him slumped against the edge of one of the AT-TE's legs, his head hanging to his side. A small scar of blood lined his forehead, and his chest was moving up and down in a steady motion, suggesting that he was merely unconscious.

Aayla let out a held breath, relief flooding over her that she had not killed him, and only then did all the questions that she had been suppressing during the fight come racing back to her.

_Why have the clones done this?! Were they merely following orders? If so, who could have given these orders, and why? And, if this has happened here, is it also happening-_

Her thoughts were cut short as a sudden sadness washed through her, saturating the force with its intensity. Aayla's eyes widened, her eyes flooding with involuntary tears, and then the force clouded with a sickening sadness as more and more Jedi around the galaxy met their fate.

"What has happened," Aayla said aloud to herself, her head hanging down low and her lekku swinging from side to side. "How could this-"

Her words were cut short yet again as her connection to the force sensed that the clones coming up the hill behind her were nearing her position. She turned her head to the place where they would soon be coming up from, and mentally judged how long she would have before they made it there.

The difference wasn't much, and she quickly deactivated her lightsabers with a crackle, tucked them into her belt, and then took off at a sprint for a nearby hill, where Felucia's foliage seemed the thickest. She crashed into the plant-life at the top of the hill, brushing aside pollen-laden flower petals, and then bounded a few more steps until she was sure that she would be out of sight of the clones. She then turned around and knelt down beneath another flowery-like bloom, holding one knee to her jaw as she scanned the scene before her.

The clones had just reached the top of the hill and, after seeing the destruction of the AT-TE's crew, they had dispersed rapidly, searching the grounds for her. Distant shouted orders of, "Spread out," and "She couldn't have gotten far," reached up to her from the base of the hill.

Slowly, tearfully, Aayla took a few steps back so that the clones were out of her sight.

"What has happened," she said again, a tear streaming down her cheek and falling to the ground below. Her knees were bent up to her chest, and her arms were cradled tightly around them.

_And how many Jedi are there left?_

_

* * *

_

_Yeah, sorry about the length, there... But there was no good place to separate it. Anyway, hope you enjoyed it, and feel free to review if you liked it!  
_


	6. Chapter VI

VI

Jedi Master Plo Koon jerked his hand hard on the yoke of his small starfighter, sending it into a downward spiral towards one of the rows of buildings that lined much of the planet of Cato Neimoidia. He swerved left as his starfighter zoomed underneath an arch of buildings above him, dodging a red plasma blast from a Separatist Tri-Fighter, and then sent his Aethersprite-model starfighter into an almost impossible climb straight up as he dodged the building that came up right behind the arch.

The Separatist Tri-Fighter behind him didn't catch the memo as quickly, and a ball of orange and red fire marked its grave as the fighter plummeted into the side of the building.

Plo Koon smiled behind his breath mask as he swiveled his starfighter up and around and headed it back to the squadron of ARC-170 starfighters that he was in command of. The Jedi Master's skin was a bright red, which was typical of being a Kel Dor, and since his species did not breathe oxygen, he was forced to wear an antiox breath mask over his face almost all of the time.

With a flick of his hand, Plo pressed one of the button on his control console and his comlink clicked on. "Captain Jag, this is General Koon. Are you there?"

A brief second of static followed, and then a voice came back, "Yes, sir; we're here. We were just finishing up a few… loose ends."

Plo smiled at the captains way of putting: _just killing the rest of the bad-guys that were on your tail_. "Okay, captain, good; are there any signs of anyone else in the vicinity?"

"No, sir. I think we got them all, since they were-…" the transmission went to static for a second, and then Plo heard Jag say into the comlink, with more urgency than before, "On your five, General! A bunch of those Tri-Fighters just appeared on our sensors!"

Plo looked down at his own sensors, and then said, "I see them, captain. You know what to do."

Jag chuckled as he said, "Yes, sir. Jag out."

With that, Plo spun his starfighter away from where he had been heading and angled back towards the city, angling his small craft upward so that he could have an advantage if it came to a dogfight with the enemy starfighters.

As Plo looked out through his transparisteel cockpit to find the small blips on his radar that symbolized enemy Tri-Fighters, he noticed the landscape that surrounded the world. Most of the world was made up of huge land bridges that spaced across deep chasms, and the cities of this world had been built on top of these bridges like giant metal rings.

Plo let his starfighter climb upward a bit longer as he continued to study the world's strange architecture, and then he reached out with the force in an attempt to try and gain an impression about where the enemy Tri-Fighters were.

Droids were not as easy to pick up in the force as living beings were, as they were only a mass of circuitry, but for Plo Koon, Jedi Master, he identified where the Tri-Fighters were almost istantly.

He looked down through the transparisteel of the cockpit to where he had sensed the small fighters, and a second later he spotted them zooming in and out of one of the cities below, readying themselves for a fight.

"And here we go," Plo muttered to himself.

Skillfully, he angled his small starfighter downward, straight towards where the Tri-Fighters had gathered. He saw that the clones in his command had already engaged the enemy fighters, and though he was still fairly high up, the explosions from the Tri-Fighters we're beginning to become more clearly defined.

Plo slightly angled his starfighter again, and then punched in the throttle. The Aethersprite raced down toward the city like a rancor late to dinner, and as Plo neared the structures, he pulled up into a semicircle that led him straight toward one of the Tri-Fighter.

Guided by the force and his years of experience in a starfighter, the Separatists craft didn't have a chance as Plo fingered the a button on his controls and blasted the Tri-Fighter into oblivion.

The explosion turned from red to orange to yellow, and that was when Plo's starfighter screeched through the orb of what had been a Separatists Tri-Fighter. It came out on the other side of the explosion a second later, unscathed, and Plo circled his craft back around, assessing the situation.

Most of the enemy Tri-Fighters had already been destroyed by the ARC 170's, and so far not a single clone had been lost. Plo smiled at this thought as he quickly located with the force one of the few remaining Tri-Fighters. To his surprise, the enemy fighter had somehow gotten behind him without him noticing, and was even now readying itself to open fire on him.

Quickly, Plo jerked his yoke to the right, and his starfighter responded accordingly, sending him up and to the right as crimson laser fire arched into the buildings below him.

Plo then angled his starfighter upward, above the ledge of one of the nearest building, and then leveled off. The Tri-Fighter came up behind him a second later, and Plo hit the throttle, sending his craft streaking forward. The Tri-Fighter followed, just as Plo had expected, and he smiled to himself as he turned his attention back to what was in front of him.

A giant spire of stone that shot up from the top of these city's buildings was located directly in front of him, and his starfighter was streaking straight toward it.

"Let's hope this works," Plo said to himself as he dodged yet another blast of crimson from behind.

The enemy Tri-Fighter was closing in, partly because Plo was letting it and partly because he was slowing down for a sharp maneuver, but the droid pilot seemed oblivious to the fact that it was being led into a trap.

The spire approached, and just when it seemed as if the Jedi Master wouldn't be able to twist his way out of it, Plo spun his starfighter hard right, down, and then back up again so that he was on the other side of the spire, still heading in the same direction that he had been going. The Separatist Tri-Fighter had no such skills or abilities in maneuvering, though, and it careened straight into the tall spire at its center, cracking the top portion of the spire off and sending the stone structure crumbling down upon the small Tri-Fighter.

Plo nodded his head in satisfaction, a human trait that he had grown into the habit of doing, as he saw the Separatist fighter explode into an orb of flames as the top of the spire crumpled down on top of it.

Slowly, he began to circle his craft back around, and as he did so he triggered his comlink. "Was that the last of them, captain?"

Captain Jag responded almost instantly, apparently having watched the encounter. "By my readings it is, sir. And, might I add, good flying out there."

Plo smiled as he said, "You too, Captain. I only took out two; you and your squadron took out the rest. Now, let's continue this patrol and check in back at base."

"Yes, sir," Jag responded and closed the link.

Plo nodded to himself again, glad that he had not lost any of the clone troopers. Slowly, he turned his starfighter back around in a wide loop past the city to continue on with the patrol, and the ARC-170's fell into line behind him.

It was at that moment that he felt an awful pain inside him, a pain in the force. At once, Plo's mind raced to the conclusion that a Jedi must have fallen in battle; that a Jedi must have been killed.

_But, no, that can't be right,_ he thought to himself. _I have felt the death of a Jedi before, and though horrible, it was not at such a magnitude as this… It was not this horrendous… _He turned his head to the side, as if to shy away from the pain that was pouring through him in the force. _Could something worse have happened?_

At that moment, a green flash of light blossomed against the side of his starfighter, and Plo was jerked back as the blast jolted his cockpit. He looked back fearfully, and saw that the ARC-170's that had been following him, the vessels manned by the loyal clone troopers at his commanded, had opened fire.

Plo triggered the comlink immediately as he sent his starfighter into a downward spiral to avoid another blast from the ARC-170's. Three more blasts of green plasma drove past him as he did so, one tipping the side of his wing, as he shouted into the comlink, "Jag? Jag, what are you-"

"I'm sorry, sir," was the cool, professional reply given back to him. "Orders."

Plo's mind exploded in shock as another volley of green plasma lashed into his engines, causing the small starfighter to start spinning into an uncontrolled downward spiral. A jet-black stream of smoke billowed out from the engine, marking its decent.

_Orders?!_

Unable to control the unstable craft, the Jedi Master's starfighter slammed straight into one of the spires that stretched up from the buildings below. The smoking remains of the small craft then ricocheted off of the spire and slammed down into a lower arch-like structure, engulfing the small craft in an inferno.

Reality then vanished for the Jedi Master behind a glorious white blaze.


	7. Chapter VII

First of all, thank you to all of those who have reviewed, writing really isn't that fun if you can't get feedback from other people. And, to answer _lordtrayus's_ question, I'm seriously toying with the idea to do something with the AU aspects of the story that I've thrown in, like Aayla surviving, but I'm not really sure. I guess it depends on the number of people who really like the story, and the amount of time I actually have to write it. Right now, I'm writing about the Jedi Temple. Anyway, thanks again to all of my reviewers!

* * *

VII

Quinlan Vos, eyes squinted down at the battlefield below him, sat perched atop the remains of the overseer's platform of one of the Republic's massive Juggernaut assault vehicles, something that resembled an AT-TE on steroids that had had it's legs replaced by five gigantic wheels on each side of it. From this viewpoint, the Jedi Master could see nearly the entire battle that surrounded him, and blaster fire bathed both the Separatist and Republic forces across the ancient Wookiee homeworld of Kashyyyk.

Kashyyyk was a lush, green planet, with the native and truly enormous wroshyr trees covering much of the world's surface. These trees were so colossal that the Wookiees, the giant fur-coated humanoids that were native to the planet, built their cities atop the branches of these massive trees, high up in the air.

Currently, the Wookiees had teamed up with the Republic, and under the command of Master Yoda, the Wookiee-aided Republic was now striking back against the massive force of invading Separatist droids.

Vos tilted his head down towards the fight below him, and his long, black dreadlocked hair fell over his face. The Jedi Master was a Kiffar, a near-human species that hailed from the planet Kiffu, and being a Kiffar, he had the ability to read the thoughts of the dead, or living, by touch alone. His body was strong and muscled, and he wore a padded dark sleeveless vest above long, black pants. Just under his eyes and above his nose was the traditional Kiffar band of pale yellow that stretched from one side of his face to the other, and on the back of his belt he wore a deactivated lightsaber hilt.

Vos had been given the rank Jedi Master seven years before the Clone Wars had begun, and in that that time he had since become a double agent, with his allegiance lying with the Jedi. He had worked with Dooku, pretending to play a pawn in the Dark Lord's game of power, and in that time he had become almost obsessed with finding the 'second' Sith Lord, the one Dooku was working with. But Dooku had seen through this ploy of loyalty, and, instead of merely killing Vos outright, the Sith Lord had pushed Vos to the limits, making him question his faithfulness toward the Jedi, and began to tempt the Jedi Master with lures of the dark side's power.

After Dooku's continued pressure and promises of power, Vos had unknowingly fallen to the dark side, though he himself still believed that in the back of his mind he was merely trying to gain the Sith Lord's trust. Only when he met Aayla Secura in the heat of battle, his former padwan and close friend, along with his former Master, Tholme, did he realize how much he had fallen to the dark side's embrace.

Being redeemed once again as a Jedi Master, he was then made the General over a contingent of clone troopers and sent to Kashyyyk, to help drive back the onslaught of invading Separatist forces while fighting alongside Master Luminara Unduli and Master Yoda.

Vos's mouth curved into a grimace as his eyes took in the scene below him. Hundreds upon thousands of droids and tanks were marching steadily up Kashyyyk's shoreline, coming across from a nearby sandbar that was just across the shallow sea, and their blaster fire lit up the sky like fireworks as the Republic forces collided with them.

Thousands of troop-transports and tanks, aircraft and artillery, both Separatist and Republic, clashed together on the snow-white shoreline in what looked like chaos, and the sky above was filled with the red and blue explosions from exploding artillery rounds. The shoreline and surrounding terrain was dotted with upraised platforms that the Wookiee's had fastened from the remains of trees, and atop these platforms were sharpshooters and still larger artillery, providing even more turmoil to the battle. Republic clones troopers and Separatist battle droids alike littered the ground below between the many explosions, and they engaged intermittently as they all rushed around the anarchy of the battlefield in an attempt to find cover.

The Wookiees, entrenched in some of the few barriers set up across the shoreline and harboring a ruthlessness that was fueled by their desire to defend their homeworld, were proving to be considerably effective against the Separatists. Many of the Wookiees wielded bow-casters, a primitive-looking bow-like weapon that shot a trio of very unprimitive-like laser bolts. They used these bow-casters to great effect against the droids, as well as a plethora of other equally-effective weapons including flying mounted helicopter-like crafts that flew in side-by-side with the Republic ships.

But even with this added help and a tenacity for not giving up that the Wookiees provided, the droids still clearly had the upper hand in numbers, outgunning the Republic by a nearly five-to-one ratio.

Vos sighed and titled his head back up toward one of the higher platforms where Master Yoda was supposed to be overseeing the battlefield.

"I hope you can pull this off, Yoda," Vos said, his voice ragged from the ash of the many explosions that filled the air. "I really do."

He turned back to the battle below him, scanning the landscape to find a place where he could possibly insert himself to do the most damage to the Separatist forces, and then felt a sudden jolt streak through the back of his mind.

Vos's head twitched and one eyebrow lifted up as he searched his mind for what the sudden ping from the force had been. Then, all too suddenly, he knew.

Aayla was in danger.

_Aayla_.

Instantly, the Jedi Master's thoughts flew back to the last time he had seen his former padwan, when she had redeemed him from the dark side's path once and for all.

"_This is the core of you. This is the truth of you," Aayla had said, clutching her fist to her chest as she tried to sway him from the dark when he had been at its highest peak. "You are made of light. We are all made of light. And the Light is greater than the anger of the darkness, Quin… I know… I know this because… because you told it to me so long ago… Master…"_

Those words, no, _his_ words, spoken back to him, had been the final act that had turned him from the dark side's path and made him into a Jedi once again.

Vos tried to reach out to Aayla in the force, stretching his presence toward her own. But as he touched her, he felt only a frantic and confused emotion from her, and then he himself was jerked back to reality as his connection to the force sent a danger-sense screaming through his head like an alarm.

He spun his head around as the distinctive sound of a canon powering up just beside him resounded through his ears, and less than a second later he found himself starring straight toward the main canon of one of the neighboring tanks. The tank's canon barrel was still spinning around, powering itself before it opened fire, and Vos knew that he had perhaps only a second or two to live.

Thoughts of Khaleen and her unborn child – his unborn child – were the first things to streak through his mind as he realized that he would not be living much longer. His plans to leave the Jedi Order at the end of the Clone Wars and stay with his love, Khaleen, for the rest of his life evaporated at this realization.

_NO, this _can't_ be happening! It _CAN'T_ end like this! It can't-_

With an echoing boom, the tank fired, and a bolt of blue plasma streaked from its barrel toward where Vos sat perched atop the massive Juggernaut. The Jedi Master didn't have time to react as the blast hit, and an instant later the already-damaged Juggernaut exploded into a crimson blanket of fire, sending shrapnel sailing out toward the surrounding shoreline and nearby forest of wroshyr trees.

* * *

...

* * *

...

* * *

...

Kashyyyk's three moons cast bright shafts of light throughout the wroshyr-rich jungles of the Wookiee homeworld, and one of these shafts of light now reached deep into the depths of the forest to a single, plate-sized wroshyr limb that jutted out from the tree beside it.

The pale moonlight illuminated the limb and its surroundings as motionless, and then all of a sudden a bloody and battered hand grasped the edge of the small wroshyr limb. The hand's grime-covered fingernails scratched deep grooves into the wood as it tried to hang there, and then the hand's muscles tensed as a figure slowly drew himself up from underneath the small limb, using only his left hand to carry his weight as he did so.

The figure sat there atop the branch for another long couple of seconds, gasping in long, haggard breaths through smoke-burned lungs. His face was dipped down, concealing it from the moon's pale shafts of light, and long, black hair hung down low over his head in a drapery of tangled dreadlocks. His right arm hung limp beside him, resting gently on the side of the branch, and dried blood encrusted the length of the arm.

His shirt had been torn off, and small scars and slashes were etched all across his torso. His dark pants had been shredded to the knees, and the many lacerations across his body had transformed him into a nexu scratching post. His belt was still clipped around his waist, managing to have somehow survived the recent explosion, and a metallic, cylindrical handle hung from the edge of this belt.

The figure took another few haggard breaths, and then reached down and unclipped the cylindrical handle. He drew it up to the moonlight, and then tilted his head up so that he could look down upon his lightsaber.

_It was the _clones... Vos thought, the last word pulsing through his mind like a curse. _They _betrayed_ us… they betrayed _all _of us…_ He pounded his good hand down hard against the limb, and he felt it shudder underneath the force of the blow. Then a quote of what he had once said, long ago, streaked through his head.

"_I am not part of the dark, simply deeper in the shadows… ever deeper…"_

Remembering his past life, Vos took a long, slow breath – hard to do with his lungs still smoke-burnt from the recent explosion – and used the force to calm himself. Reasoning returned to him a second later, and his anger dissipated.

_The clones _did_ betray us, but they would not have done so without a cause… or orders… _Vos's mouth curved downward into a grimace. _The clones are living beings that have been _programmed_ to obey orders without question, and that makes them no better than droids. But they would _not_ have decided to kill all their Jedi Generals without just orders…_

_But who would have ordered them to kill the Jedi… _Who_ would be in a high enough position of power to take out the entire Jedi Order…_

His mind instantly turned to the thing that he and the other Jedi had been hunting ever since the beginning of the war.

_The second Sith…_

_The Sith that was in command of Dooku, the one who seemed to have been running this war from the start… _He_ is the reason for this, and _he _is the one who has destroyed the Jedi… I might now be the only Jedi left in the galaxy... The only one left-…_

He closed his eyes for a second, and then slowly reopened them

_No, there is still Aayla… I can still feel Aayla… She is alive, so there must be others… There _have_ to be others…_

Vos slowly tilted his head upward, toward the moonlit sky above him.

_There _have_ to be other Jedi left, and I _have_ to find them… to join up with them… to vanquish this Sith that has destroyed our galaxy…_

The Jedi Master titled his head up higher, so that he was now looking directly at the nearest moon.

_I will find you, Sith… And I _will_ end your dominion of darkness from this galaxy once and for all…no matter _what_ it takes…_


	8. Chapter VIII

VIII

Commander Gree of Kashyyyk's clone regiment stood atop one of the massive platforms that lined the shoreline around him. He was holding a specialized binocular to his visor, and through it was watching the battle unfold beneath him.

Ribbons of red and blue meshed into each other as the Separatists and Republic forces collided, and though the Republic had the superior technology and the Wookiees as allies, the Separatist's numbers were beginning to overwhelm them.

Gree sighed and took the binocular from his visor, fastening it to his belt as he did so. He was dressed in Phase II Combat Armor, a dark, camouflaged variation of normal white clone armor, and his helmet was adorned with the same kind of camouflage as the rest of him.

_Master Yoda, you better have a plan that can stop this invasion, or else this planet is likely to become all of our graves. _

It was at that moment that a humming vibration from within a concealed pocket on his armor began vibrating. Puzzled, Gree took his attention away from the battle and dug into the concealed pocket. A second later, he withdrew a small comlink that was channel-secure and locked onto the High Chancellor's frequency.

He activated the comlink with the press of a button, and a miniaturized figure suddenly sprang to life within his hand. The figure was wrapped in dark robes, and though shadow concealed his face, Gree knew that this had to be the High Chancellor because of the frequency-locked comlink code.

"Commander Gree," the Chancellor said in a gravelly, almost hoarse voice. "Execute Order 66…"

"It will be done, my Lord," Gree responded instantly, his mind already kicking in on what Order 66 precisely meant from the 150 Contingency Orders that he had been made to memorize during his training on Kamino.

Gree deactivated the comlink and put it back into his pocket, and then turned around from where he stood on the edge of the massive platform. A cone-like roof was positioned over the circle that was the platform, and on the other side of the platform stood General Yoda, Jedi Master for the Republic. On each side of the diminutive, green, almost frog-like Jedi Master, stood a Wookiee, Tarfful on the left and Chewbacca on the right. All three of them had their backs to him, and they were gazing down at the vicious battlefield still raging below.

Gree's lieutenant stood a few meters back from the Jedi Master and Wookiees, and Gree activated his frequency-secure comlink with his lieutenant, opening a private channel between the two of them.

"We'll have to make sure that we're close enough before we can take the Jedi out," Gree said to his lieutenant, his voice a whisper even though there was no way that anyone could hear them outside of their helmets. "Else he might survive the initial blast and get away only injured." He was walking forward now, with his blaster rifle held down low to his side. "But once we do, we'll have to take out both Wookiees, too. I'm willing to bet that their sympathies lie more with Master Yoda than to the Republic, and if they aren't neutralized immediately, then we'll have a firefight on our hands."

Gree's lieutenant nodded, a barely perceptible nod that could have passed off as a swaying of the head, and then the two clones began nearing the Jedi Master.

"I'll take out Tarfful," Gree said, "And you take out Chewbacca. If all goes well, they won't even know what hit them."

His lieutenant nodded again, and then the two clones reached the Jedi and stopped a few feet behind him. The Jedi Master was still starring out at the battle below, and the two Wookiees beside him were doing likewise, oblivious to their impending doom. Yoda's cane, the one that the diminutive Jedi Master usually held, had fallen to the floor a few minutes ago, and Gree assumed that the Jedi had felt something of tremendous power coming through the force, and in his lack of concentration had dropped his cane.

_All the better for us,_ Gree thought as he nodded toward his lieutenant. The two clones both brought up their blaster rifles and leveled them at the Jedi Master's back. _The more he's distracted, the easier he will be to kill…_

Both his lieutenant and Gree's own reality were then flashed away a second later by an emerald beam of light, and the two clone's bodies fell to the floor in a heap, decapitated.


	9. Chapter IX

_Sorry about the wait everyone, and I would just like to say thank you to all of the people who have reviewed! Also, this is one of my favorite chapters, so I hope you guys like it as much as I liked writing it! _

_- To make it really cool, try to visualize everything-  
_

* * *

IX

The two emerald blades lashed forward, dual wielded by the Jedi Knight Serra Keto, and less then a second later they impacted against the sapphire blade of one of the most known Jedi across the galaxy.

Anakin Skywalker.

_No, _Serra reasoned as she jerked her two jade-colored lightsaber blades down to her sides and stepped back, her breath coming to her in pants. _This was not Skywalker, this was something else… This was a Sith…_

No sooner had the thought entered her mind when, what had once been Anakin Skywalker, lunged at her again, his azure blade spinning through the air in a crazed frenzy.

She dodged skillfully to the left of his blade, the two braids of her black hair twirling through the air as she did so, and then turned back around and rose her lightsaber's blades up just in time to deflect another strike that Anakin hammered down upon her.

She let out a grunt as the sapphire blade impacted into hers' with the intensity of an artillery round, and she felt Anakin's anger permeate the force around her as she struggled to hold him back.

The standstill continued for another two long seconds, with neither combatant willing to give any leeway to the other, and then Serra snapped her twin lightsabers down and jumped backwards into the air.

She landed a few meters away from the enraged Anakin, her breath coming in even deeper gasps now. Her arms were beginning to tremble from the length that the duel had already spanned, and her face was drenched in sweat, with the black strands of her hair imprinted to her forehead.

Serra was a human Jedi Knight, proficiently skilled in the art of dual wielding lightsabers, and she was dressed in a padded leather top that descended down into a tightly-fit beige fabric across her arms and legs. Her jet-black hair was cut short, barring the two long braids that hung down from either side of her bangs, and her body was acrobatic and slim.

Serra took in another deep breath, and then quickly glanced around to her left and right in order to get her bearings. She mentally noted that she was in the Tower of First Knowledge, a dead end, and that Anakin had most likely been herding her here all along. She moved her gaze back to the figure in front of her, and found herself starring into the cruel, yellow eyes of a Sith.

Anakin was standing in the middle of doorway of the massive circular room, barring her only escape, and his sapphire blade was held down low to his side, burning a small trail of black through the marble surface of the tile flooring. Behind him, a constant drone of blaster fire was submerging everything within it's sound, and blue ribbons of plasma bolts lit the Jedi Temple up in a sapphire embrace.

Beyond the constant blaster fire, flames licked at the sides of some of the massive stone statues that had once stood guard at the Great Library's entrance, and clone troopers were even now overwhelming the last remaining Jedi within the temple, murdering their former comrades where they stood.

Serra's gaze locked back to the Sith, and she let out a deep sigh of animosity.

She had seen Anakin-, no, she had seen the_ Sith_, kill her former Jedi friends right before her eyes, mercilessly cutting them down without so much as a second thought.

_This isn't Anakin Skywalker, _she thought again, readying herself once more for the approaching duel. _The Anakin Skywalker that I knew, that I served beside just months before, could never have done this… Only a _Sith _could have the cruelty to do what he is doing now, and so a Sith he is…_

"You might as well give up now," Anakin said, his voice a low growl and barely audible against the drone of blaster fire behind him. His eyes were glowering at her with a hatred that only a Sith could bear, and his mouth was curved up into a feral grin. "You know I am more powerful than you, than anyone in the entire Jedi Temple… No matter what you try to do to stop me, you will lose…"

"Oh, well that's a wonderful excuse to just give up and _die_!" Serra spat back at him, her voice laden with sarcasm.

Her tone then turned deathly serious as she shouted, "But I will _not_ just stand down and _die_ while you slaughter the rest of the Jedi here without a second thought…" A single tear ran down the side of her cheek, tracing a line through her ash-smeared face, and fell to the floor. "You are not the Jedi I once knew… You are not Anakin Skywalker anymore... You're a _Sith_! And I will _not_ loose to you…"

She silently twirled her twin emerald blades through the air above her head and stretched her legs apart, readying herself into a classic dual-lightsaber combat stance. "I was trained by Cin Drallig himself, a padwan to Master Yoda and one of the most legendary lightsaber duelists the Jedi Order has yet known," she yelled, her voice rising in volume. "I will _not_ loose to you, Sith!"

Anakin's feral grin curved up even more, carving a maniacal sneer across his face that was focused to the side. "The name isn't Skywalker, anymore," he said as he began walking slowly towards her, his lightsaber still held down low to his side. "The name's Vader… _Darth_ Vader…"

And then he struck.

The former Jedi Knight lunged forward, abandoning all pretenses of defense and just lashed out at her like a rancor in a brawling arena. His dark blue lightsaber blade sizzled through the air towards her, just above her head, and Serra twisted the lightsaber in her left hand around to block the blow, barely making it there in time.

But even as Vader's blade was impacting against the emerald beam, he was suddenly twisting around, pivoting on his feet, and was slashing out at her again, this time toward her ribs.

Serra swung her lightsaber downward, batting back the lunge as she was forced to take another step back, and then Vader was on her again, hammering blow after blow against her green blades.

Serra frantically dodged to her left and right while, using her twin blades as both a weapon and shield, harnessed everything that her Master had ever taught her about lightsaber dueling to keep from being overwhelmed. But Vader's barrages of blows were too quick and unexpected, too offensive, and nothing that her Master had shown her had prepared her for this.

After a few seconds of this continued exchange of blow, she realized that he _was_ too powerful for her to handle, and that even with her emotion-laden attacks he was _still_ beating her back. She knew right then that she had to escape, to rally with the surviving Jedi and _somehow_ save what was left of the Order.

Serra swung both of her lightsabers outward, deflecting another one of Vader's blows in a very unorthodox style of defense, and then jumped back into the air. She landed a second later, her back almost against the wall, and she quickly cast herself out into the force while scanning the circular room for a way to escape.

The walls were too thick for her to cut a hole through in time, and the many pillars that surrounded the room were…

Serra's eyes widened as a plan began to form in her head, and then she locked her gaze back on Vader.

The Sith was marching towards her furiously, his eyes narrowed into slits and his face a snarl. His dark blonde hair was matted to his forehead from the sweat, and a red scar across his right eye marred his face.

"You know what, I think they're right," Serra said as she cast herself out into the force and touched one of the many pillars that surrounded them, hoping to distract Vader enough with her taunt to keep him from noticing what she was about to do. "The dark side _does_ make you ugly."

Vader howled out some kind of indecipherable cry, and then charged at her, his face contorting into rage and his sapphire blade singing through the air as it came.

And right as he did this, Serra called the force to her and grabbed hold of one of the massive pillars that surrounded the room, hurling it down towards the former Jedi Knight in a crumbling mass of stone and marble.

Vader halted mid-charge as his face snapped up to face the pillar, and then he jumped quickly backward as the giant cylindrical stone mass crashed into the marble floor in front of him, shattering into various-sized chunks of rock.

Vader had dodged the pillar, unharmed, but he had cost himself three precious seconds as he did so, and now Serra was vaulting over the side of the pillar and sprinting towards the sole doorway, her feet flying beneath her and her twin lightsaber blades held low to her sides and pointed backwards.

She felt Vader closing in behind her, despite her frantic pace, and then she rounded the doorway, skidding across the marble floor as she did so.

Clones were still in the main hallway, issuing orders, and as they saw her they raised their blaster rifles and opened fire. She flicked her twin blades up behind her, still running, and deflected the four shots back at the clones that had fired them, rendering them silent. Another group of clones, coming out of the library, trained their blasters on her and were just about to open fire when Vader came screeching out of the Tower of First Knowledge.

"Wait, hold your fire," Vader yelled back at them as he turned and began racing after her. "She's _mine_!"

As Vader began to close on her again, Serra desperately cast herself out in the force, searching for a place to hide, or escape. She sensed a balcony above her, overlooking the rest of the Great Jedi Hall, and she called upon the force to aid her as she jumped.

The force propelled her upward, sending her gliding toward the balcony, and as she landed she spun around, expecting to see Vader right behind her. Sure enough, he came less than a second later, his sapphire blade carving ribbons through the air as he landed.

They were both stationed just a meter apart on the balcony, lightsabers raised to their chests, and both of them wore looks of hatred across their faces. The balcony around them was just a ledge that overlooked the Great Jedi Hall, and three massive stone pillars stood arranged in a triangle around them.

"So much for being the chosen one, _Vader_…" Serra said icily, her lightsabers twirling unconsciously back and forth in her hands.

Vader's yellow eyes narrow, his face red with rage, and an instant later he was throwing his left hand upward, palm-up.

Serra didn't have time to react as the force push that expelled from his hand collided into her, and then her back was slamming against the wall on the other side of the ledge.

A groan escaped her lips as her eyes flickered open, and she then barely had the time it took to raise both of her lightsabers up into a cross above her before Vader's azure beam collided with the two emerald blades.

A loud staticky crackle of sparks filled the air around her as she pushed up with her twin blades, barely keeping Vader at bay. Her muscles were beginning to tremble even more, now, and even with the force her strength was beginning to wane.

Serra pushed her left foot backwards, anchoring it against the wall and providing her with support, and then pushed up against Vader's sapphire blade with all of her might.

But all her remaining might was not enough, and Vader's lightsaber continued to push down against her own two blades.

_But no, it can't end like this, _Serra thought desperately, her teeth gritted together and her face drenched with sweat. _I have to get out of here and find the other Jedi… I have to get the younglings out of here before Vader can…_

The thought struck her like an arrow, piercing her heart, and instantly a new wave of emotions washed over her as a picture of the future flashed through her eyes.

_In the High Council Chamber, on one of the highest levels of the Jedi Temple, Vader stood silhouetted in the doorway, a hood cloaking his face, his lightsaber unlit in his hand._

_Jedi younglings, barely the ages of eight or nine, came shakily out from behind the High Council chairs, starring hopefully up at Vader. A short sandy-haired boy, very young, even among the others, stood up for his fellow friends and came into the middle of the room, trembling._

_Serra recognized him as the boy Sors Bandeam, a human who's great formidability and courage distinguished him amongst the rest of the younglings, despite his young age. _

"_Master, Skywalker, there are too many of them!" Bors said, his voice shaking and his face masked with fear. "What are we going to do?"_

_Vader just stared back at Bors, unmoving, his face cloaked behind the dark hood of his robes. And then, with the snap-hiss of an igniting lightsaber, Vader's sapphire blade extended into life, casting a blue light across the darkened Council area._

_Bors flinched, taking a step backwards. His eyes were locked on the blue blade, starring at it in fear, and then his gaze moved up to Vader's face, a single tear streaking down the side of his cheek._

"_NO!"_ Serra shouted ravenously, her cry echoing out from beneath the crackle of the clashing lightsaber blades. And then, with a surge of emotion-laden and force enhanced strength, she pushed forward against Vader's sapphire blade and sent him reeling back.

Vader's face went from rage to shock and back again as Serra charged forward and began hammering his lightsaber with erratic blows from her left and right, taking the offensive for the first time in the duel.

Vader, still caught off guard from her sudden strength, frantically spun his own lightsaber around in his hands, intercepting each blow, and took three steps backward as Serra continued her assault.

The picture of the younglings returned to Serra's mind again, and she lashed forward again with a barbaric blow aimed at Vader's chest. Vader caught the blow horizontally on his sapphire blade, and he took another step back as Serra pushed forward. His face was beginning to show fear, and his yellow eyes were now more of survival than they were of slaughter.

Serra pushed back again, knowing that she couldn't keep this strength up much longer, and forced Vader to take yet another step back and pin himself to the edge of one of the massive pillars.

With the constant crackle of the three lightsaber blades being clashed together resounding through her ears, Serra knew that she had to finish this now, or never.

Then, with her left hand still holding her lightsaber down upon the Sith's blade, she lifted her other blade and swung it around her head, sideways, aiming to decapitate the former Jedi Knight.

All of her senses went slow-motion as her green blade sliced through the air towards Vader's head. She saw him, eyeing the blow that would surely decapitate him, and noticed him swivel his lightsaber hilt almost unnoticeably in his hands, giving him just a slight angle against how he was holding off her other blade.

Then, just as the emerald beam of light would have taken off his head, he ducked under the blade, bringing his own lightsaber up as he did so, and angled her other lightsaber out of the way of his head with a surge of strength.

He spun back up a few feet away from her, stabilizing his footing as her own lightsaber blade – the one that had been meant to decapitate him – sliced straight through the entirety of the pillar that had been in front of just moments before. The pillar shuddered from the sudden awkwardness of not having a connected base, but it held true, grinding down upon the portion of its base that had just been disintegrated.

Serra's teeth gritted together at the close miss, and then she continued her spin that the missed strike had started and pivoted around on her feet, raising her twin blades to her chest in order to parry any obvious follow-up attacks.

But even as she was pivoting, she knew that she had been mistaken in guessing Vader's next attack. For, instead of lunging at her with his blade, Vader was holding his lightsaber down at his side, harmlessly, and his left hand was held up in front of him as if grasping an invisible lever.

Serra's eyes followed his, and only too late did she realize what he was concentrating on.

_The pillar…_

With a crumble of stone being thrown through the air, the massive pillar that Serra had cut through plummeted down upon her. She didn't even have the half-second it took to look in its direction before it smashed into her, and as it did it sent her body tumbling off the side of the balcony and toward the Great Hall below, the pillar following close behind her.

Serra's body was rained with loose gravel as she fell, and as her eyes flickered open, she saw she shadow of the pillar that was falling right behind her, most probably being assisted by the force in its decent.

Serra knew that there was no way she could survive a few metric tons of stone smashing into her at point-blank range, and that even if she somehow could, the extra force that Vader was using to hurl the pillar down at her would be enough to shatter the entire marble flooring of the Great Hall.

Even in the face of death, her thoughts drifted back once again to the younglings, as they stood gazing hopefully up at Vader, and she desperately cast herself out into the force to someone, to anyone.

_Save the younglings… We _have _to save the younglings…somehow…_

Her body then hit the ground, hard, and she felt her right arm and shoulder crack under the force of the fall. Her eyes flickered, dancing in and out of consciousness, and she saw the nearing shadow of the pillar above her.

A second later, darkness overtook her.

* * *

_I loved writing this chapter, it was very fun. Also, the character Serra Keto did actually exist in the_ Revenge of the Sith _video game, though I have not played it. Anyway, hope you guys enjoyed how I wrote the lightsaber duel!  
_


	10. Chapter X

* * *

My thanks go out to everyone who has reviewed, thanks guys, a lot!

* * *

X

Vader let his hand drop down to his side, his gaze still locked on the remains of the pillar as the gravel slowly settled across the marble flooring of the Great Hall. As the ruble finally slid to a halt, he deactivated his lightsaber, which he had kept down at his side, and turned his gaze away from what was now yet another Jedi's gravesite.

He had felt Serra, calling out to someone with such an intensity right before her death. But he hadn't been able to pinpoint exactly _who_ she was trying to contact before the pillar had crushed her, extinguishing her life. All he knew was that it was a Jedi.

_And such a waste… If she could have been turned, she would have been invaluable in establishing peace across the Empire…_

The word _Empire_ struck a cord with him, and Vader's eyes closed as his mind began dissecting the word.

_All of my life, the Jedi have taught me that an _empire_ could only lead to anarchy and civil disarray… But no, they were _wrong_… They have _always_ been wrong! With the establishment of a Galactic Empire, I could eliminate all the corruption that the Jedi have implanted in one fell swing; I could bring planetary dictators from power and bring the planets into a newfound sense of security; I could establish peace across the entire galaxy…_

_I could be with Padmé, always, without any kind of fear of resentment from anyone…_

Vader's eyes flashed open then, and he took in the entirety of the Great Hallway below him without really seeing anything.

_And the Jedi are all that stand in my way…_

Vader leapt off from the balcony, easing his fall in the force as he landed on one knee upon the marble flooring of the Great Hall. He slowly stood back up, hooking his lightsaber onto his belt and surveying his surroundings as he did so.

The main engagement between the Jedi and clones had taken place in the Great Hall, and the destruction that had transpired was clearly evident. Flames were dancing their way across the various tapestries that still hung from the walls, licking their fiery tendrils up to the roof, and the stone walls themselves were scorched black from blaster fire. What had once been massive stone sculptures and architecture now lay on the floor as ruble and debris.

Bodies of both Jedi and clone troopers alike littered the ground, and after the short, vicious fight that had transpired, the clones had overcome the Jedis' counterattack and had moved forward, scattering out into the Jedi Temple and eliminating any remaining Jedi they encountered.

Vader walked forward, into the center of the great hall, and then stopped before a semicircle of three dead Jedi Masters. He tilted his head down to look at them, and memories began flashing through his mind.

_He had slashed his lightsaber down in a vicious diagonal strike, breaking through the Jedi Master's double-bladed defenses, and he had heard a strangled cry as his blade had found its target. _

_The Jedi Master had then slumped to the ground, joining the two Masters beside him, and he had come up onto his knees as his dual-bladed lightsaber deactivated and tumbled out of his convulsing hands. _

_With an effort, the Jedi Master had lifted his head to look him in the eyes, his mouth carved into a grimace of pain as he starred horror-stricken at him. _

"_You're a monster," the Jedi had managed through a hoarse choke of blood, his voice coming in pained gasps due to the slash across his chest._

_Vader had deactivated his lightsaber and had come around so that he was directly in front of the Jedi Master, gazing into his eyes as he might gaze upon his next meal._

"_And you're dead," he had said, his voice a parody of kindness._

_As the Jedi's face contorted to become even more horror-stricken, he had slammed the pommel of his lightsaber's hilt up hard into the Master's already-scarred chest, warranting a gasp of pain in response, and then he had ignited the weapon._

_A blue, sapphire blade had sprouted from the Jedi Master's back, and the Jedi had let out a gurgled cry before falling silent and slumping over onto the floor, joining the Masters beside him._

Vader shook his head in disgust, wiping the memory away.

_Three Jedi Masters, three of the most _powerful_ individuals in the entire Jedi Temple, and they couldn't even stand up to a _single_ Sith… _

Vader raised his left hand out in front of him, as if holding an invisible orb, and he flexed his hand experimentally, as if stretching his fingers. A streak of blue-white lightning suddenly danced from his thumb to his forefinger, lighting up his palm for a second before evaporating into nothingness. Vader smiled.

_The dark side has always been stronger than the light, the Jedi have just been too blind to see it…_

Vader turned back around as he sensed one of the clone troopers of the 501st approaching him. Like all of the 501st, he wore the basic white armor of normal clone troopers with an added blue stripe across the helmet, chest plate, and shoulder pads.

"Sir," the clone said as he came up beside Vader, snapping to attention. "We've successfully activated the beacon that notifies all remaining Jedi to return to the Jedi Temple immediately, and that the war is over. Ambushes are being set up as we speak, and there is next to no chance of a Jedi escaping once he has reached the Temple."

Vader nodded.

"Also, sir;" the private continued, a note of uncertainty creeping into his voice. "We've had reports that a Jedi has been able to penetrate our upper-level defenses. They reported him as having exceptional skill with a blade, and that he is most likely coming for the Jedi younglings that have taken refuge inside the High Council Chambers."

Vader nodded again, his mind tumbling over the information in his head.

_Skilled with a lightsaber, and coming to rescue the Jedi younglings… It could only be a Jedi Master, and only a few Masters are left…Could it be Shaak Ti? Has she survived for this long, and is even now trying to…_

Vader closed his eyes, stretching his senses out into the force, trying to sense who this Jedi could be. He felt touches, glances of light that indicated a powerful lightside presence trying to mask itself within the force, but he could not identify _who_ it was.

Finally, Vader's head snapped back to the private and he said, "Issue all of your men to stand down, should they come into contact with this Jedi, and tell them to evacuate the area as soon as possible." Vader's eyes locked on the passageway at the end of the hall that read _Room of a Thousand Fountains_, the room just before the High Council Chambers. "I'll be handling this one _personally_…"

"Yes, sir," the private saluted crisply, as all clones did, and then turned away from Vader and walked off to issue his new commands.

Vader turned back to the hallway that led to the Room of a Thousand Fountains, and then began slowly walking toward it as he drew his hood back up over his head and effectively hid his features within its dark embrace.

His dark cloak billowed out behind him as he walked, and his long, dark blonde hair was ruffled into a mess of curls. His face bore a single, vertical scar across his right eye, born from a duel between him and Asajj Ventress, and the scar only added to his intimidating presence.

He rounded the circular passage to the hallway, and stepped into a brightly-lit hall that had only a few marks of battle upon its walls. Some of the Jedi, when they had realized that they could not win in the initial counterattack, had attempted to fall back into these hallways, only to be gunned down by the many clone troopers that had been behind them.

Vader continued forward, dodging the body of a clone or Jedi here and there as he made his way down the hallway. He passed massive scorch marks in the wall, indistinguishable from either a blaster bolt or a lightsaber, and then made a sharp right turn as he came into the enormous Room of a Thousand Fountains.

His pace slowed as he walked forward, his feet crunching under the grass beneath him, and he cast his gaze around the entire room, looking for a sign of danger.

The Room of a Thousand Fountains had, as its name implied, a thousand fountains dotted amongst it's almost outdoor-like landscape. Various types of flora littered the area, making the room a kind of enclosed garden, and waterfalls fell from the room's many rock-like outcroppings. The ground underneath was grass, mixed with stone walkways and pottery, and meditative areas could be seen as great big round open areas amongst the diverse plant-life.

And yet, despite the many natural themes that the room held, it was blended in with the clean whiteness of technology that the Jedi Temple contained with amazing grace. White durasteel bridges and crosswalks lined the place, melding into the beauty of trees and fauna instead of detracting from their presence. The Room of a Thousand Fountains was definitely a wonder amongst the Jedi Temple, and it was one of the few places on Coruscant that imitated the natural plant-life of Coruscant before it had been colonized.

_This place has not known a fight …_Vader thought as he finished scanning the room.

And, sure enough, there were no blaster marks marring the natural beauty of the room. Though clone trooper's footprints could be seen imprinted throughout the grass from when they had spanned out earlier searching the Temple for Jedi, it looked as though no major battle had taken place in the Room of a Thousand Fountains.

_Yet…_

Vader began striding forward, toward one of the open meditating areas amongst the plant-life. He could feel the force in the room, an ever-changing sphere of power, but he also felt a kind of elusive lightness, dancing beyond his grasp. And that could mean only one thing.

_A Jedi…_

Vader continued his slow stride to the center of the meditating area, below a latticework of crosswalks that stretched out above him, and then stopped, casting himself out into the force while his eyes took in the surroundings. The Jedi Master was here, somewhere, watching him, but he could not pinpoint the location.

_You cannot hide from me, _Vader called into the force, his own voice a dominant sleuth of dark side power compared to the fleeting presence of light that was the Jedi.

A few seconds went by in silence, and then the light spoke. _And yet, I appear to be doing just that…_

Vader's eyebrows crossed, his scar crinkling into a jagged line across his eye. The voice was familiar, as if he had known its speaker well, and yet his mind could not work out exactly _who_ it was that had just spoken to him.

His face was still drawn up beneath his hood, shadowing his features, and if he had not faced this Jedi already, than the Master might not know that he had once been the famed Jedi Knight Anakin Skywalker. He could use this deception to his favor. After all, deception was the way of the Sith…

He kept his face hidden, his head tilted downward, and then he said into the force, _You know that this only prolongs the inevitable… I will find you, no matter what, and the lies that you and your kind have infused into the minds of the innocents will finally come to an end…_

Vader stood motionless in the center of the meditating area, the sides of his cloak flapping up in the artificial breeze that the Room of a Thousand Fountains generated. He waited for a response.

Silence.

As the seconds began to drag by without answer, a thought began to form within Vader's mind.

_Could this Master really be such a coward as to try and flee, to try and escape his own doom while leaving the younglings and other remaining Jedi trapped within the Temple's walls? Of course he would, he is a Jedi, and the Jedi are …_

A switch suddenly snapped in the back of Vader's mind, and by reflex he called his lightsaber to his hand and ignited it in the same fluid motion, bringing it up high above his head.

An emerald beam of light collided with his sapphire blade an instant later, and a crackle of sparks sounded as Vader was forced downward. The brilliant blue and green light from the blades was blinding, and Vader couldn't see anything beyond the glow of the two lightsabers.

With a grunt, Vader took his strength, tapping into the dark side as he did so, and shoved his blade up and around, knocking the Jedi's lightsaber down to his side as he staggered back.

Then, without waiting to identify his attacker, Vader threw his left hand forward, palm-out, and took in the hatred, the malice, the anger that he now felt for having been ambushed, and sent this power hurling outward toward his attacker in a massive force push.

The Jedi didn't have a chance to react as his body folded inward and was flung across the Room of a Thousand Fountains, impacting into a stone wall on the other side of a small lake that ran through a portion of the room.

Vader took a step toward the downed Jedi, meaning to follow up the attack, but before he could move again he felt another switch snapping in the back of his mind.

He spun back around, curving his sapphire blade through the air as he did so, and his lightsaber met an emerald blade as another Jedi landed beside him.

As the two blades clashed, Vader acutely felt the difference between this Jedi and the first one. For, instead of a highly trained Jedi Master, as the first one clearly was, this Jedi was no older than fourteen, and the braid hanging from his dirty blonde hair signified that he was still a Jedi Padwan.

As Vader looked into the young padwan's eyes between the glare of the two blades, he realized that he had known him. Or, more correctly, Anakin Skywalker had known him. He was the Jedi padwan Whie Melreaux, a gifted padwan which Anakin Skywalker and his former Master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, had helped rescue from Asajj Ventress just a few months prior.

Vader stepped to his left, sliding his lightsaber down Whie's blade, and then lashed forward, cutting his sapphire blade up into a vicious diagonal strike as he did so.

Whie skillfully raised his lightsaber, trying valiantly to use his Jedi training to parry the blow aside, but Vader's speed had been too quick, and the young padwan's face froze into shock as a blue streak flashed across his chest. His green blade then vanished within his hands, and he slowly tumbled backwards, his back hitting hard against one of the stone steps that led to the meditating area.

Before Vader could attempt to think again, another danger sense sprouted in the back of his mind, and he whirled around again, bringing his lightsaber up to bare as he did so.

His sapphire blade impacted into another blue beam as his turn brought him face to face with yet another Jedi.

He recognized this Jedi as Bene, a slightly older Jedi padwan that Anakin Skywalker had met only briefly, and he could feel her anger permeating the force around him at the sight of her companion's death.

Vader flashed a cruel, twisted smile at her, and then swung his lightsaber around himself, hammering two blows into Bene's blue blade as he forced her to retreat backward.

She came to a stop a few feet away from him, her breath coming heavily and her lightsaber held shakily out in front of her, fear beginning to show through the cracks of her resolve.

_Anger and fear…_ Vader thought, _two of the most powerful allies of the dark side…_

Vader shot his left hand forward, forming a kind of claw like shape with his fingers, and then called upon the anger and fear that the Jedi padwan was feeling. The two feelings came to Vader instantly, adding to his depth of his power, and he channeled this power outward, toward the Jedi's throat.

Bene made a kind of bulging-eyed expression of shock, and then her lightsaber dropped from her grip as both of her hands flew up to her neck. Slowly, Vader lifted his hand higher, so that she was now writhing above the ground, and he heard a choked cry escape her lips.

Vader's mouth curved up into a smile at her futile attempt to cry out, and then he felt his danger senses kick in for the fourth time in the last ten seconds. He jerked his head around to his right as he raised his lightsaber up one-handed, his left hand still holding Bene within its choking grip.

An emerald blade impacted into his azure blade right before his eyes, and though the flash of light that resulted was blinding, he knew instantly that this was the first Jedi that had attacked him. This was the Jedi Master.

The Master then attacked again, going down low for a strike, and as Vader countered the attack, the Jedi almost immediately followed it up with an upward strike to his head. Vader narrowly parried this one away as well, struggling to fight one-handed against the Jedi Master, and three more vicious strikes and parries followed.

Then, just as Vader thought that the Jedi Master's barbarous swings would break through his clumsy one-handed defenses, he felt Bene's life ebb away, and he instantly dropped her.

Before she even hit the floor, Vader took his own lightsaber in both hands and then swung it out in front of him horizontally as the Jedi Master's emerald blade crackled down against it in a vertical strike.

Vader's right foot arched backward as he struggled to gain leverage over the Jedi Master, and his teeth were gritted together as sweat streaked down his forehead. His dark hood was still wrapped up around his head, concealing much of his face.

And then, between the brilliant glare of the emerald and sapphire blades, Vader's eyes locked onto the Jedi Master's face, and he instantly recognized the man before him.

_Qui-Gon Jinn._

* * *

_Well... if this isn't a cliff hanger, then I don't know what is... Hope you guys enjoyed it!  
_


	11. Chapter XI

XI

Vader's eyes lit up in shock as he found himself starring face to face with the late Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, Obi-Wan's former mentor who had perished at the hands of the Sith Lord Darth Maul all those years ago on Naboo.

"_No!_" Vader cried as he cut his lightsaber down to his left, disengaging the two blades, and then jumped backwards, somersaulting through the air as he did so. He landed a few meters away from Qui-Gon, facing him, and he forced his lightsaber to stay steady in his hands as he held it out in front of him.

Qui-Gon looked just as he had all those years ago on Naboo. He still wore the same dark-brown-and-light-tan combination of Jedi Robes that he had always worn, and his face looked as if it hadn't aged a day since his death. His hair was long, draped to his shoulders, and a dark brown beard covered his chin.

"You _can't_ still be alive," Vader cried out again, his voice rising shrilly in volume. He began shaking his head. "There is _no_ way that-"

_Anakin…_

The voice stretched into Vader's mind like an unwanted thought, and his head physically flinched back as he retreated yet another step from the Jedi Master.

_Anakin… _the voice repeated, a smooth, flowing voice that curved it's way through the force like a river. _What have you done to yourself? What have you become?_

Vader took another step back, beginning to breathe heavily, his eyes glued in horror upon Qui-Gon. The Jedi Master stood immobile in front of him, his emerald blade held to his chest in a two-handed grip.

"_I,_" Vader shouted back, emphasizing the word, his anger rising into his throat, "have become the _savior_ of the Republic… the savior of the _Empire_…and I will bring justice, peace, and security to _my_ new empire! …"

Qui-Gon stood there silently, a look of sadness chiseled into his face. Then, a quiet whisper, like a rustle of leaves, threaded its way into Vader's ears, as if someone was mumbling something under their breath, and suddenly Qui-Gon's voice was echoing into his mind again.

_You are not a Sith, Anakin… You are still the Skywalker that I knew, and you forever will be, no matter what kind of lies you tell yourself that you are this _Vader_, this cruel, powerful, passion-driven Dark Lord of the Sith… You are still Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, as you always have been, and as you always will be…_

Vader took another step backward, his jaw working to cry out some kind of reply, and suddenly thoughts of his childhood began assaulting him.

_- He stood jumping excitedly around a table on Tatooine as he asked his mother if he could go with the Jedi Master Qui-Gon Jinn, and his apprentice, Obi-Wan Kenobi, to be trained in the Jedi ways and to see the galaxy. His mother had given him one of 'those looks', and then, after much reasoning, had finally agreed to let him go, to escape the shackles of slavery that he had worn his entire life. He had began jumping up and down ecstatically, overcome with joy, hugging and kissing his mom before he left, and he had promised her that he would come back someday, and that he would free her from her bondage, no matter what…_

_It had been one of the happiest days of his life…_

_- He stood bent over his mother, cradling her in his arms, as tears streaked down the side of his face, tracing jagged lines down his already dust-coated cheeks. He was inside the hut of a Tusken Raider camp, where they had tortured his mother for months on end, and she was saying, "I'm so proud of you, Ani… so proud… I missed you so much… now, I am complete…" Her final words were then barely audible. "I… I love__—__" Then she had passed into the void, never to finish the already-known statement. _

_His eyes had burned with a fiery vengeance, seconds before he had begun the slaughter of the entire Tusken Raider village…_

_- He stood above the kneeling Count Dooku, the Sith Lord who had taken off his arm, holding both his own sapphire blade and the Count's crimson one in his hands, crossed against the Sith Lord's neck. _

"_Good, Anakin, good…" Palpatine, now known as Darth Sidious, said to him, almost chuckling. Then his voice turned deathly serious as he commanded, "Kill him… kill him now…"_

_Dooku's eyes widened as Palpatine said this, and he shot a frightened look at the Chancellor, an unspoken question._

"_I shouldn't" Anakin had said, his voice strained with the anger that he was feeling for the Sith Lord before him. _

"_Do it," Palpatine commanded, his voice turning colder._

_Then, in one clean motion, he had decapitated Dooku, and the Sith Lord's truncated body had fallen back against the floor with a thud, never to move again… _

_- He stood next to Padmé, holding her, caressing her shoulders as she told him that she was pregnant… that she would be having a baby… his baby… _

The memory of the joy in her eyes and the wonder gracing her voice was clear, even know, when he was inside the Jedi Temple fighting a long-dead Jedi Master that he had once known and thought of as a friend…

_Padmé…_

Vader's eyes locked back on Qui-Gon's face, and he bellowed out, "No, you're wrong! I _am_ the Chosen One, but I was chosen to bring the lies that the Jedi have instilled in the citizens to an _end_!" His voice was beginning to crack from the volume with which he was yelling. "I _will_ do this! I _will_ bring peace to _my_ empire, and _you_ cannot stop me!"

He then swung his blade down low and to his side, grasping it in a two-handed grip, and charged.

The Jedi Master before him did not harbor an expression of fear or alarm, as he should have since the most powerful force essence in the entire galaxy was charging toward him, but instead his face was one of disappointment, as if he had been hoping for a better end.

As Vader charged, he was dimly aware of this fact, and that the elusive whisper in the back of his mind had returned, and was now dancing amongst the edge of his senses, but the majority of his attention was focused on bringing this _thing_ that stood before him, this Jedi, this abomination, down.

Vader's blade struck down upon Qui-Gon's emerald blade, and a crackling hiss echoed out into the Room of a Thousand Fountains as the Jedi Master skillfully deflected the swipe to his right with a twitch of his hand.

Vader growled, and then brought his own blade back around, using the momentum of his first strike to keep him coming down upon the Jedi Master's exposed torso.

Qui-Gon swiftly parried this blow away as well, his face locked into that continuous, disapproving scowl, and then the duel began.

* * *

_Forgive the brevity of this chapter, since a combination of writer's block and homework have kept me from writing much. But don't worry, all will be explained concerning the story, and hopefully I'll be writing again soon. _

_-_

_Also, my thanks go to my reviewers, who's comments _do _actually help to inspire me to write more. Thanks! - especially to some of the most recent reviewers, _gamefreek321, pronker, Darth Comrade, _and_ PokemonNinja2, _and to all the other people that I know I'm forgetting! Seriously, thanks! And I hope you enjoy the rest of the story! _


	12. Chapter XII

Again, thanks again to all of my reviewers~!~!~!~!~!~!~!~

* * *

XII

Vader jumped backwards, somersaulting through the air, and he landed at the stone basin of one of the great waterfalls that littered the Room of a Thousand Fountains. He was beginning to sweat, and a near-miss had burned a small scar through the bottom of his robe. His hood was still draped across his face, despite the intensity of the brief duel, and it still shadowed his features within its dark embrace.

He held his lightsaber before him, getting a better grip on the handle, and then turned to stare at the dead Jedi Master that he was now fighting. He recognized parts of Qui-Gon's fighting style, and he even used elements of it himself, when going on the offensive. It was a mix between offense and speed, and it had pieces of Obi-Wan's style as well, since Qui-Gon had been his former master's mentor.

But other parts of the dead Jedi Master's style were completely alien to him, and his skill with the blade seemed only to have increased over the past decade. Qui-Gon was switching between lightsaber forms easily, bending them into his own style of aggressive combat, and his speed almost rivaled that of Master Yoda's.

Vader caught himself remembering a quote that he had silenced the speaker of only a few months before.

_Twice the pride, double the fall…_

A smile crept upon Vader's lips.

_This isn't the Jedi that I once knew; this isn't Qui-Gon Jinn… He died, over a decade ago on Naboo at the hands of Darth Maul… But this… this _thing_, is some kind of trick, some kind of illusion that the Jedi have set up to distract me… But no, I _won't_ fall for it! I _won't_ let their lies spread…_

_And I _will_ save you, __Padmé…_

He continued gazing at the dead Jedi Master before him, his smile turning into a sneer of delight.

_I think it was time that _I _led the offensive, for a change…_

Vader darted forward, harnessing the anger and the hatred, the power, that he felt for being clearly ticked in such a way, and arched his sapphire blade high, readying a bone-crushing strike to the dead Jedi Master's shoulder.

Qui-Gon jumped into a force-assisted leap as Vader neared him, and he landed atop the edge of the waterfall nearest him, disappearing from sight behind the rocky outcropping. Vader just continued his sprint forward, still keeping his sapphire blade held high above his head, and then used the force to propel himself to the top of the waterfall.

Water splashed up to his ankles as he landed in the center of the shallow stream, and his feet skidded across the slime-coated layer of small pebbles that laced the brook's bottom. Vader wobbled backwards, splaying his feet apart while he moved his hands back and forth to keep from falling. He recovered his balance a second later, and then pushed his lightsaber forward, readying himself to defend against any follow-up attack.

But instead of an attack, he saw only Qui-Gon standing passively on the bank of the shallow stream, his lightsaber held down to his side. The bottom of his pants were soaked from where he had landed in the shallow water, and his face still wore that same, disapproving scowl.

Vader narrowed his eyebrows, and then stretched his lightsaber out in front of his chest, glaring at the long-dead Jedi Master.

_What is Qui-Gon playing at now…?_

Abruptly, the low mumble of noise came to him, as if someone was whispering something from far away and that it was just beyond his range of hearing. Vader squinted his eyes, trying to decipher what the whisper was saying, and then Qui-Gon's voice shot into his mind.

_You will regret your choice, Anakin Skywalker, the Chosen One, for as long as you live…_

_What?!_ Vader thought, but before his thoughts could continue, Qui-Gon's voice was suddenly replaced by the low whisper, the echo of noise, and the sound was beginning to get louder. A second later, all traces of the low mumble had vanished, and the whisper had expanded into a full-blown voice, a familiar voice.

"You will pay for the Jedi you have killed today, _Sith_!" the familiar voice bellowed out hoarsely. "_Whoever_ you are, _whatever_ you are, you will _not_ leave this temple alive!"

Vader's eyebrows crossed even further as he continued to stare at the motionless figure of Qui-Gon, still standing on the edge of the stream. Then, slowly, Qui-Gon's image began to fade, as if he was merely a life-sized hologram shutting down, and another person began to appear behind where Qui-Gon's had been, replacing where he stood.

And this person, Vader recognized.

_Jedi Master Cin Drallig…_

Vader stood motionless as he continued to gaze at the Jedi Master before him, his mind racing to piece together what had happened.

_Of course… Cin was trying to use the force to make me think that I was fighting Qui-Gon Jinn, to distract me as I fought… But I saw through his deception, the Jedi's deception, and I overcame their lies! The light side can never hope to conquer the dark side in terms of power, and so I am more powerful than Cin, or Qui-Gon, or _any_ Jedi… I always have been, and they always knew it, and they were afraid of losing their power to _me_…_

Memories of what the Emperor had said to him flashed back to his mind, when he had known him only as Palpatine.

_All who gain power are afraid to lose it, Anakin… Even the Jedi…_

Vader's mouth curved into a sneer, and his eyes faded into yellow.

_Then I guess it is time to show the Jedi what _true_ power really is…_

Vader rolled his shoulders, and then stretched his lightsaber out in front of his chest, glaring at the Jedi Master before him. He then tossed his head back, shying off his hood and the robe attached below it, revealing his face. The robe fell as a black drape to the stream and then slowly but steadily the current whisked it away, over the falls.

Vader saw Cin's eyes widen as the Jedi Master recognized who he was, and his sneer curled up even further.

_The dark side has always been stronger, the Jedi have just been too afraid to use it…_

Then, with a leap, Vader vaulted over the rest of the stream, and his jump brought him straight at Cin Drallig. Vader raised his sapphire blade above his head, and as he landed beside the Jedi Master he curved the azure blade around in a horizontal arc toward the Jedi's neck.

A crackle of hissing plasma resounded throughout the Room of a Thousand Fountains as the two blades struck, and sparks flew everywhere.


	13. Chapter XIII

XIII

* * *

"Skywalker!" Cin Drallig growled out above the noise of the two blades crackling together. His emerald blade was held vertically across Vader's, and his face was stained with disbelief.

Vader flashed a smile at his former teacher, and then quickly disengaged his blade as he retreated a few steps, stepping back into the brook. His feet sloshed silently through the water as a space of five meters opened up between him and the Jedi Master.

Cin's jaw was still etched in disbelief, though his lightsaber did not waver in the slightest as he stood there, regarding Vader with a cold stare. He looked young for his actual age, and his very long, dark blonde hair was draped down to his shoulders, much like Qui-Gon's had been. But, instead of a beard, his face was clean-shaven. Only the small wrinkles around his eyes and mouth marked him as aged, and he was in top physical shape. He wore a dark brown robe that was belted at his waste, and khaki pants descended to his feet.

The Jedi Master had been trained by Yoda himself, in both the ways of force manipulation and lightsaber combat, and in the years since he had begun specializing and focusing on lightsaber dueling in particular. The other Jedi of the Order sometimes referred to him as "_The Troll_", due to his relentless daily training exercises.

Right now, the two-handed grip upon his lightsaber hilt was tilted slightly to the side, giving him an appearance that made him seem slightly unbalanced.

But Vader knew it was a ploy.

He knew this because both his former-self, Anakin Skywalker, and his former-master, Obi-Wan Kenobi, had trained under him in the ways of lightsaber combat when they were younger. They had both learned of the many forms that he was a master of, and they had both based their own attack styles on much of what he had taught them.

_So_ that_ explains why the fighting style I felt was so familiar, and why it seemed like I was really fighting Qui-Gon…_

"What have you _done_, Skywalker?!" Cin growled out again from behind gritted teeth, the shock finally fading from his face, only to be replaced by a look of anger and betrayal.

Vader's mouth curved into a sneer as he answered, "I am not Skywalker anymore, Cin, that name has passed… Now, I am Darth Vader…"

Cin just starred at him for a few seconds, his jaw locked at an angle, and then spat out, "A _Sith_…" It was not a question.

Vader smirked again, his lips curling up into a feral smile. "Precisely"

And then Vader lunged.

Cin twirled his own blade into a diagonal, holding his hands above his head as he parried Vader's strike away. Vader retaliated with a swift stroke to the Jedi Master's side, and Cin took a step backward as he skillfully deflected this one away as well.

"You have _no_ idea what you have done, Anakin…" Cin growled as he wound his emerald beam around his body in a lustrous green ribbon. "Or, should I say, _Vader_…"

Vader merely smiled, and then gritted his teeth as Cin suddenly took to the offensive. He twirled his sapphire blade around his head two more times, parrying a two-strike move that Cin had begun, and then jumped backward.

He landed along the edge of the waterfall, with his back foot resting against a rock that jutted out a few centimeters over the falls. His foot slipped just barely as he settled onto the slime-coated pebbles, but he was ready for the slickness this time, and he recovered almost instantly.

The falls, though not huge, were still big enough to cause a background roar of water crashing down upon the rocks below, and this noise was all Vader could hear. Slowly, he stretched his lightsaber above his head and aimed it at Cin, a challenge to the Jedi Master.

Cin gave him a scowl, almost like Qui-Gon had worn earlier, and then jumped to a spot only a few meters from Vader, holding his lightsaber in that lopsided ploy of his while keeping his eyes on the Sith the entire time.

Vader smiled.

_Closer, closer… _He thought as he reached out with the force, feeling the water and the falls and everything else around him. _Just a few more steps…_

Cin took another wary step forward, keeping his lightsaber leveled, and it was at that moment that Vader lifted his left hand toward the Jedi Master, as if holding a glob of dirt. The water that had been steadily flowing down the waterfall and the water underfoot suddenly jumped up from the ground, as if levitating in mid-air, and then shot straight towards the Jedi Master.

Cin's face turned from wary to frantic in an instant as the water suddenly embraced him in an orb of water, submersing him in a giant splash for a few seconds.

And that was when Vader struck.

Vader's sapphire blade came cutting toward the water-blinded Jedi Master the instant the water hit him. He felt it slicing through the now dropping water, smoke trailing up from the blade, and then an emerald light punctuated the glare of the splash as his sapphire beam impacted into Cin's emerald beam.

The water cleared a second later, splashing to the ground in a brief downpour, and then Vader found himself face to face with Cin. His lightsaber was held to the Jedi Master's chest, diagonally, and the crackle of sparks and evaporating water danced between the two blades.

_So his lightsaber didn't short-circuit from the amount of water that I just threw at him… He must have fitted his lightsaber with specialized crystals that allow it to stay active while underwater…_

The two force-wielders held their deadlocked position for another long second, and then Cin quickly retreated back a step, coming back into the water that was just now beginning to flow correctly again.

Taking this retreat as an opening, Vader lunged at the Jedi Master with the intensity of an angry rancor, the tip of his blade weaving through the air like a firefly.

And it was the intensity of his attack that kept him from reacting to the hand that Cin suddenly shot forward, palm-out.

_Uh-oh…_

Before he even realized it, Vader was flying backwards through the air, coming off of the waterfall's edge and shooting toward the meditation areas below. His shoulders snapped back as he collided into the ground a second later, and a shallow groove was cut into the grass as he skidded to a halt.

Before he had even come to a complete stop, he dazedly jumped up onto his feet and tried to regain his focus as he watched Cin jump off of the waterfall himself and land on the other side of the meditation area.

Anger and hatred began welling up inside him as he watched the Jedi Master before him, and thoughts of what the Emperor had told him about the dark side came to his mind.

_Use your emotions, my apprentice… The Jedi have tried to bar you from this concept, to stifle your experience is harnessing such feelings of the force, because they feared that you would become too powerful to control… Too powerful for them to manipulate… But you can _use_ these emotions, this passion that you feel, to make yourself even _more_ powerful… All the emotions you feel from the Jedi betraying you so heartlessly, the hatred, the rage, the _power_ that you feel, use _this_ to make the Jedi fall… Use your _hatred_ of the Jedi to bring them to their end, Darth Vader…_

Vader thoughts refocused, and his mouth curved as his eyes locked onto the figure in front of him.

Cin was drenched from the water that had been thrown on top of him, and his brown and beige pants were now plastered to his skin. His hair was soaked, and beads of water still lined his face, despite his attempts to wipe them away.

"Anakin…" Cin growled, his breathing calm despite the intensity of the brief duel.

_And yet he _still_ refuses to call me by my true name…_

"Look at yourself, Anakin!" Cin growled again, his voice rising in volume. "You're killing your friends! Your classmates! Your teachers! …" Cin's gaze drifted to the two dead bodies of Whie and Bene on the other side of the meditation area, and he cringed, "… Children… Anakin, _how_ can you do this to yourself?!"

"I haven't done this, Cin. _You_ have done this! The _Jedi_ have done this… You have brought this fate upon yourselves, with your lies and your deceptions, and _you _are the ones keeping this galaxy from peace, not the other way around…"

Cin just continued to stare at Vader as if he couldn't believe his eyes, and his mouth was almost hanging completely open. Finally, he regained his composure, and said, "You have become the thing you swore to destroy, Anakin… You _are_ the Sith…"

Vader smiled, not the comradely, care-free smile that his former-self Anakin Skywalker had worn, but the smile of a predator, savoring the hunt right before the kill. "I am the _truth_, _Jedi_…"

And that was when Vader jumped, his body whirling through midair as he landed beside the Jedi Master and struck out with his sapphire blade. Cin swiftly parried the strike away from himself, swinging his blade outward and around. But Vader came back even harder with the next strike, and Cin barely managed to catch the azure blade on his own as Vader hammered the blow upon his emerald beam.

Cin gritted his teeth and stuck his left foot behind him, anchoring himself to the ground as Vader pressed down upon him. His face was still soaked, and sweat was beginning to join the beads of water running down his chin. The hissing crackle of the two blades was the only sound he could hear, and between the bright blue and green glare of the lightsabers he saw Vader, his former pupil's eyes gleaming a bright yellow.

_The eyes of a _Sith_…_

Vader suddenly disengaged from the downward push, and before Cin could even anticipate an attack Vader was coming at him from up high, a diagonal downward stroke. Cin parried the blow, falling into the muscle memory that hours upon hours of lightsaber training had brought him as Vader continued the barrage with another vicious strike to his side.

The two force-wielder's lightsabers were blue and green ribbons painted through the air as they dueled, and there was no cease to the constant crackle of the blades impacting against each other, being pulled away, and then reengaging less then a second later. Cin's feet were rooted to the ground as he dueled, and he felt as if his arms were weaving a cocoon of green around himself as he blocked blow after blow of Vader's vicious strikes, each one more unrelenting than the last.

Cin lifted his emerald beam high to block yet another strike from Vader's sapphire blade, and as he did this Vader's right hand suddenly shot forward from his lightsaber hilt and then wrapped itself around the Jedi Master's neck in a choke-hold.

Cin's body instantly stiffened as Vader's grip tightened around his neck. His hand convulsed from the sudden stiffness, dropping the lightsaber from his fingertips, and he saw as it deactivated with a sputtering crackle and hit the soft grass below.

_Uh-oh…_

Cin's eyes shot back to Vader, and another sputtering gurgle escaped his lips as Vader lifted him up off the ground in his one-handed choke-hold.

"And now you _die_, _Jedi_…" Vader snarled as he pulled his lightsaber back with his free hand, his yellow eyes burning with an intensity that could melt asteroids.

_Oh, but I'm not letting you win that easily…_

Even as Vader was in the motion of pulling back, readying his swing, Cin outstretched his right arm to his side, calling his lightsaber to him. It ignited at the same instant it came into his hand, and as it did so he quickly spun it up to meet Vader's blade.

The two blades impacted into each other with a deafening crackle of energy, each lightsaber being wielded one-handed. Cin let out another gurgled gasp as Vader's grip tightened even further around his neck, rage permeating the force around him, and then their eyes locked, one a set of murder and the other a set of survival.

Then, calling upon the force to revitalize himself, Cin curved his emerald blade down to the right, away from them both, and pulled Vader's blade arching down with it. Even as he was doing this, he pulled his left hand up from underneath Vader's grasp on his neck, and then released a force push directly into the Sith's chest.

Vader flew backwards, his hand tearing free from the Jedi Master's neck as his sapphire blade flew from his hand. He landed haphazardly upon the grass at the edge of the meditating area, digging a gouge deep enough through it to reveal dirt, and then flipped up onto his feet, his eyes filled with rage.

The Sith Lord was now literally trembling with the hatred that he felt, and his hands were curled into fists at his side. He still did not have his lightsaber, as he had not yet recovered it, but Cin knew that he was still extremely dangerous without it.

Cin took his hand away from his neck, where he had been rubbing it when Vader's hand had been torn free, and he casually twirled his lightsaber out in front of him, not taking his eyes off of Vader. Sweat was beginning to streak down his face now, meshing with the dampness of his hair, and his own breathing was like a metronome in his ear.

Then, beneath the anger and the rage that Cin felt emanating from the lone figure that stood before him, he felt something else. It was a kind of sign… a signal… a warning.

Before Cin could even piece together what was happening, he saw Vader's hands rise above his head, tilt forward to the roof above where he stood, and he was suddenly leaping backwards as the force took control of his movements.

An instant later, with a groan of creaking metal, the side of one of the crosswalks that was located above him plummeted down into the meditation area, crashing to the floor with a resonant thud that sprayed dirt and grass high into the air.

Cin hit hard against the ground as he landed back-first inches from the durasteel crosswalk beside him, and his lightsaber was thrown to his side as the wind was knocked out of him. He gasped a few times, attempting to reclaim his breath, and it came to him right as his eyes caught a dark shadow coming down at him from above.

Jumping above the crashed durasteel crosswalk was Vader, feet flung out beneath him and his dark clothing billowing out behind him. His left hand was outstretched to his side, and as Cin watched, Vader's lightsaber sprang up into his hand from where it had landed on the ground earlier. Vader then turned his head down towards Cin, and he ignited his blade in a brilliant beam of blue as he raised the weapon above his head, his eyes gleaming a cruel yellow.

Cin reacted out of pure instinct as he flung his legs out in front of him, throwing himself up onto his feet, and then spun around and grasped his still-lit lightsaber from the ground. He continued this spin all the way back around, to where he would be facing Vader, and he arched his emerald beam in front of his face as a brilliant blue light collided into it.

Cin grunted and was forced a step back as Vader's blade pushed him back. He could barely see Vader behind the fountain of sparks that broke between the two blades, but he could still feel the Sith's anger as it saturated the force around him.

Cin grunted again, blinking away the sweat that was now streaking into his eyes, and then disengaged completely as he took another few steps back, away from Vader. He was beginning to pant now, and his stance was less composed.

_He's too powerful to go head to head with… _Cin realized as his gaze drifted to the mangled crosswalk beside him. The side of the crosswalk was grounded into the dirt where it had landed, but it was slanted at an angle that made it a steep climb up to the rest of the crosswalks above. _I guess I'll just have to try something a little different…_

Cin turned his attention back to Vader, and a smile crept upon his lips. Vader shot him a quizzical stare back, and that was when Cin jumped.

The Jedi Master propelled himself upward, arching straight over Vader's head, and then landed with a stagger along the edge of the durasteel crosswalk behind him. Cin's feet scattered for a second as he struggled to maintain his balance on the tilted walkway, and then he swiftly brought his emerald blade out in front of him in a defensive position as he steadied his wobbling.

Vader was already charging, and the blue and green blades collided a second later with a sickening hiss. Cin held the stance for a few long seconds, leaning back all the while and giving ground, and then quickly disengaged with a twitch of his wrist and jumped into a backwards summersault up and behind where Vader stood.

He landed midway up the slanted durasteel crosswalk, and he had to grab the hand railing to keep himself from sliding back down again. He jammed his foot into the side of the railing to lock him in place, and then twirled his emerald blade through his left hand absently as his gaze locked back onto the darkly-clothed figure still standing the base of the crashed walkway.

"Coward!" Vader bellowed, his face red from both the continued duel and the rage that was billowing up inside of him. "Come back and fight!"

Cin flashed him a smile, one more of contempt than of humor, and then swiftly spun around, deactivated his blade, and began sprinting up the rest of the crosswalk's steep slope. He heard Vader's distant shout of rage, and then felt as the walkway beneath him shook and the Sith obliviously took chase behind him.

Cin bounded up the incline in long force-assisted strides, his feet coming down hard upon the durasteel plating. He reached the top of the crosswalk a few seconds later, and he continued his sprint onto the balcony that opened up before him.

It was a wide balcony, overlooking much of the Room of a Thousand Fountains, and farther in, two stone archways flanked by ancient stone sentinels marked the entrance to a large, concave-like chamber surrounded by great marble pillars.

Cin slowed his pace as he veered to the right of the concaved-room. He then slid his unlit lightsaber into the belt at his waist and came to a halt at the back edge of the balcony. The violent tremors that had been resounding from the crosswalk abruptly ended, marking the completion of the Sith's accent behind him.

Cin still had his back to the edge of the crosswalk, where Vader now stood, and his hands were down by his side, hung loosely as if holding an orb in each hand. He could feel Vader behind him, a scolding cauldron of fire and ash in the force, and he could practically taste the hatred that the Sith was now channeling toward him.

_Anakin Skywalker… The Chosen One… The hero of this war… the one individual who was chosen by the force to rid the galaxy of the Sith once and for all; to bring balance to the force… _

…_Has betrayed us all…_

A sigh escaped Cin's lips, and his chest heaved up and then back down again as he stood starring down at the wall in front of him, still with his back to the edge of the crosswalk.

_And why did he think that I was dead - That I was someone else earlier, before I could see his face? …The dark side must have been corrupting him all along, corrupted him until he wallowed in it's power…But I will do what I must, what I have to… _

…_I must destroy this Sith before he destroys us…_

Slowly, Cin curled the fingers in both of his hands tighter, and then focused himself on what Master Yoda had taught him about harnessing the power of the force and converting it into pure energy for physical manipulation. He had been fascinated by this ability when he had first learned it, and in the years since, as well as becoming proficient in lightsaber combat, he had honed his ability in force energy manipulation.

The force touched Cin instantly as he reached out for it, and as it did, he began focusing it, picking out the many strand that he saw that force as and combining them into one, compressing and channeling their essences and energies into his own.

A pale blue orb began forming in both of the Jedi Master's hands, resembling something like the haze of a hologram as it fizzled and dilated unstably.

Slowly, he turned around, his hands still outstretched and curled at his sides. He steadily raised his head and saw Vader standing before him, still at the edge of the crosswalk and harboring a sense of wariness upon his face.

Finally, Cin spoke, his booming voice enhanced by the amount of power that he was drawing in. "There is one lesson you have yet to learn, Vader…" He blinked slowly, his mouth curving to his side, and then his voice suddenly rose in intensity. "… How to become one with the _force_!"

Cin's hands abruptly rose, coming towards each other, and the two orbs of force energy suddenly melded into one and shot forward, blinking through space like a gunshot.

Vader's eyes didn't even have the time to widen as the force energy orb collided into his chest, throwing him up into the air and backwards.

His body sailed through the entrance to the concave-like room, his side skimming the arms of one the statues that flanked the doorway, and he then collided back first into the top of one of the massive pillars that surrounded the room.

Ruble erupted like a fountain as the pillar collapsed, shattering upon impact with the technologically-white floor in a spray of stone. Two other pillars collapsed upon these as well from the force of the impact, adding their debris to the havoc.

A misty haze of stone and rock settled over the entire room, and then all went silent.

* * *

_My thanks go to Queen, (this is only my second story, so hopefully my writing skills can only get better), Gamefreek321, Pronker, Xaja Silversheen, Darth Comrade, PokemonNinja2, and all the other people that I'm sadly forgetting that have reviewed... seriously, though, thank you! It helps a lot when your trying to write and you see that people have positively reviewed your story. _


	14. Chapter XIV

Okay, well, this is the last chapter, so I hope everyone has enjoyed it so far!

* * *

And a special thanks goes to all of my reviewers, who, without, I would probably have quit long ago.

_Pronker- the crashing down of the walkway leading to the heights of the room I actually stole from my previous story, but don't tell anyone.  
_

* * *

XIV

Vader's hand shot up out of the rubble, scraping past the dust that had settled over the jagged stone surfaces. His fingernails ground down onto the rough outer surface of the pillar's remains with a sickening screech as he fumbled for a handhold.

Then, with a grunt, his muscles tightened and he pulled his battered body from the rubble beneath him. Loose dust and stone fragments fell from his hair and shoulders as he positioned his feet awkwardly upon one of the few remaining intact sections of the pillar. His legs were quivering beneath him, and his hair was draped over his face in a smear.

Vader slowly tilted his head down to see himself, and he held his arms to his sides, his hands stretched upward. His right arm was smeared with blood and dust from a shallow scrape across his forearm, and the dark shirt across his chest was ragged and torn from where the orb of energy had impacted with him.

He had cocooned himself within the force when the orb had hit him as a reflex, an unconscious thought, and he knew that if he hadn't of done this then the amount of energy that the orb contained would surely have killed him.

Vader brought his head back up, leveling it with the Jedi Master on the other side of the concaved-room. The intent to kill gleamed in his pale yellow eyes, and rage colored his face into a crimson rose surrounding his cheeks.

"_My_ turn, _Jedi_!" Vader bellowed out, his voiced threat barely distinguishable from the roar of a rancor.

Vader then launched himself from the rubble of the pillar, sailing through the air like a proton torpedo. He landed hard on the marble floor, keeping his eyes trained vehemently on the figure before him, and then began marching forward without missing a beat.

He didn't have his lightsaber in hand, and he didn't even care anymore. The only thought streaking through his mind was to punish, to _destroy _the person who threatened him, his wife, and his yet-to-be-born child. To destroy _everyone_ who threatened them…

Vader's footsteps echoed throughout the great chamber like metronome as he approached, adding their rhythm to the beat of the two force wielder's hearts. Cin stood with a look of someone trying to decipher a riddle as Vader neared, angling his blade between his two hands perfunctorily as he tried to work out what Vader was planning to do without a lightsaber.

Vader's mouth curved into a smile as he continued to near him, guessing the Jedi Master's thoughts. Then, without even consciously thinking, he tapped into the dark side's power. The familiar presence of strength and comfort flowed into him like a river, and Vader's smile broadened. Then, still marching forward, Vader shoved both of his hands up and to the side, as if tossing a boulder, and he let the dark side's might flow through him.

Cin's eyes widened, and the Jedi Master was suddenly flying backwards through the air, pinched from where he stood by the force. It took less than a second for him to crash into the wall on the far side of the chamber, and his breath left him as he collapsed to the ground in a heap.

Vader continued starring at the Jedi Master in triumph as he lowered his hands back down to his side, the dark side fueling his thoughts and desires. He then snapped his head to the left, back toward the mass of rubble that he had emerged from, and reached out to it in the force. He felt his lightsaber beneath the shattered stone pillars and wall segments, and he called it to him with the force.

The cylindrical weapon shot out from beneath the crumbled stone and marble and straight into Vader's hand as he turned back around to face Cin.

The Jedi Master was already starting to get up, his chest heaving as he stood to his full height. The moisture lacing his face was indistinguishable between sweat and water, and he was favoring his right leg. His lightsaber was held firmly within his left hand, deactivated, and he was gazing to a place outside of the concaved-room, beyond Vader's line of sight.

Vader's eyebrows narrowed as he turned his head and took a few swift steps to his right in order to see what it was that the Jedi Master was staring at.

Beyond the concaved-room, a small hallway led into another section of the temple, and scattered through the hallway were two dead Jedi bodies and four clone bodies, all slumped against either the ground or the walls.

Vader was trying to figure out what he was starring at when suddenly Cin's hand struck out from beneath his robes, towards the hallway, and Vader caught a glint of metal zipping across the room toward the Jedi Master. Before Vader could even bring his head back around to face the Jedi Master, Cin was holding two lightsabers, one in each hand.

The Jedi Master's face was composed as he activated his own lightsaber first, a bright emerald beam erupting from his left hand. Then the other blade activated a second later, and a deep golden beam came into existence.

Cin then flashed a smile at Vader, the hum of his dual-wielded blades the only sound now permeating the room.

Vader returned the smile, adding an amount of contempt to it as he brought his own lightsaber out in front of him in a two-handed grip and depressed the activation switch.

The sapphire beam appeared once again, seeming to slice the air in half as the hum of the blade added it's sound to the other two lightsabers before it.

"You will go the way of your padwan, Cin," Vader shouted, and then, before awaiting a response, he shot forward, racing toward the Jedi Master like a zooming speeder.

Cin's eyes were barely open as Vader charged toward him, and the lightsabers held within his hands were steady and unmoving. He seemed almost relaxed as he stood there, awaiting some unknown moment.

Vader continued charging forward, his anger and power blinding him from anything out of the ordinary about the Jedi Master's behavior. As he came upon the Jedi Master, he jumped up into the air, still propelling himself forward, and slashed vehemently at the Master's throat.

Before his blade had even come a foot from it's target, Cin's eyes flashed fully open and he jerked his emerald blade up to deflect the blow away.

Surprise crossed Vader's features at the speed of the deflection, and then he frantically whirled around to the other side of the Jedi Master to strike down low at his waist. Once again, though, Cin's golden blade parried his own blade to the side, and Vader was forced to retreat back a step as he narrowly avoided a decapitating blow from the Jedi Master's green blade.

But Cin wouldn't let up on the attack, and as soon as Vader retreated he lunged, coming down upon both sides of Vader with his twin blades. Vader parried these strikes into the air, twisting his sapphire blade between his hands as he did so, and then jump backwards, trying to give himself time to reinitiate his offensive.

_He just won't let up, _Vader thought as he landed a few meters away from the Master, gritting his teeth together. He then turned around just in time to clash his sapphire blade with Cin's golden beam atop the steps leading down toward the center of the concaved-room. The two Jedi stood at the stalemate for a long second, and then Cin managed to bring his emerald blade up and around his shoulders and lashed it out at Vader's side. Vader was forced to retreat down the steps as Cin took to the offensive yet again.

_He's focusing the force into his movements, _Vader realized as he twisted his sapphire beam through the air and stepped back down another few steps. _He's using it to increase his speed, and I can't get ahead of it… _

The clashing of the three lightsabers was vicious, never a second coming between the sounds of the blades impacting into each other, and the gold-emerald-sapphire streaks being cut through the air made a spectacle for any onlooker to behold.

Vader feinted to his left, shuffling his own lightsaber between his hands as he attempted to parry a blow away from his legs. But even as he did so, Cin's other blade came crashing down at him from a diagonal, heading straight for his chest. Vader's eyes widened as he jumped backwards from the slash, losing his balance on the edge of one of the marble steps.

But despite his attempt to dodge the strike, Cin's golden blade managed to trace a thin scar all the way across his chest, cauterizing Vader's dark shirt with his flesh.

Vader let out a howl as he flipped down from his off-balance position onto a step two down from where he had been. He came into a position with his left foot stretched out before him with his right knee to the ground, and he was leaning upon his upraised knee with his elbows. His left arm was held up the scar now etched across his chest, and he held his sapphire blade out away from him to his right, still ignited.

The burning sensation still seared across Vader's chest as if molten lava was being poured on top of him, but despite the pain he stifled his howl. His head was still tilted down upon his knee, and he was taking in deep gasps of breath as his lungs struggled to receive enough air. Then, still breathing hard, he raised his head.

Cin was standing three steps up from him, his own dual-lightsabers held to his side and his breathing hard as well.

"The Sith… will never conquer, _Vader_…" Cin sputtered out between breaths. "You have destroyed yourself… taking with it _everything_ you once loved dear…"

As the echo of Cin's words left the air, the Jedi Master suddenly jumped forward, straight toward Vader, his gold and emerald lightsaber beams twirling through the air as he pounced.

Even as Cin jumped, Vader's mind was still set on the Jedi Master's words, and his mind unexpectedly drifted back into the past.

_He stood upon a balcony overlooking much of Coruscant, and the blinking lights of traffic drifted endlessly into the night. __Padmé__ stood beside him, caressing his shoulders, her head tilted upon his shoulder. _

"_What's bothering you?" she said ever-so softly into the night air, barely a whisper in his ear. _

_Anakin continued to stare into the endless night, and then finally said, "Nothing…" He turned his head toward hers, and caught sight of the necklace hanging from around her neck. He slowly picked it up with two fingers, caressing it. "I remember how happy you looked the day I gave this to you."_

_Padmé just continued looking at him and sighed. "Anakin, how long is it going to take for us to be open and honest with each other?" _

_Anakin stood silent once more, and then finally said, "It was a dream…"_

_She nodded slowly, keeping her eyes trained on his. "I see… Was it bad?"_

_Anakin took a deep breath, and then, his voice unsure of himself, he said, "Like the ones I used to have about my mother… just before she died…"_

_Padmé let silence linger a second longer. "And…?"_

_Anakin took another deep breath. "And it was about you…"_

_P__admés soft, caressing smile returned as she put her arms around his shoulders. "Tell me, Ani…"_

_Anakin looked back at her a second longer, and then blinked his eyes and turned away from her as he brought his elbows up to rest upon the veranda's railing, his gaze locking back upon the city of lights below him. "It was only a dream."_

_P__admé just continued to stand next to him silence, waiting for him to speak as she watched the blinking lights with him. _

_Then, taking a deep breath that sent a shiver down his spine, Anakin spoke. "You die, in childbirth…" His face was dead as he said those four words, and his voice was that of a funeral pastor's. _

_P__admé was silent for a few seconds after this statement, and her gaze drifted to her mid-section. Finally she looked up and said in that soft, caring voice of hers, "And the baby?"_

_Anakin sighed again and said, "I- I don't know." _

_P__admé's smile returned to her face, gracing her features with it's warmth. Then, slowly, she locked her arms around Anakin's stomach and said, "It was only a dream, Anakin… That doesn't mean it's going to happen."_

_Anakin's eyes then cleared and he shook his head from side to side. "I _won't_ let this dream become real, __P__admé," he said, a fierce determination coloring his voice. "I _won't_ loose you the way I did my mother…" A single tear began to roll down his cheek, and it continued it's fall all the way down to the veranda's railing. "I can't…"_

"_NO_," Vader finally screamed, his senses locking back into reality.

He took in the fact that Cin was now less than a meter from him and that he was still on the ground in a split second, and emotions flooded over his weary body. Anger, hate, love, everything that the Jedi had taught him to avoid washed over him instantly, and he lunged himself forward, his lightsaber curving an arc beneath him.

The two force wielders looked as if they would collide with each other as Vader jumped, and then, still in mid-air Vader's left hand shot forward and grasped the Jedi Master's right wrist in a vice grip. He then twisted his own hand forward, curving Cin's right wrist upward and thus curving the golden blade held within the Jedi Master's hand away from him. Then, still holding the Master's wrist, Vader lashed his sapphire blade up and to the side in one quick stroke as he spun himself around in order to avoid the Jedi Master's emerald blade.

The result was a pained cry from Cin as the sapphire blade amputated his arm at the shoulder, sending the golden lightsaber flying where it deactivated upon hitting the ground.

Cin fell to one knee even as Vader landed back upon the ground and spun himself around, his sapphire blade still arching through the air. Then, a second later, the sapphire blade took Cin's emerald blade at the hilt, slicing cleanly through it in a small uproar of sparks as the emerald blade vanished from existence.

Cin took in the moment with vague awareness, looking from his cauterized shoulder to the remaining half of his lightsaber hilt that was still clutched in his left hand. Finally, reality hit him, and he tilted his head backwards in order to look Vader in the eyes as he leaned himself so that his back was perched upon one of the stone steps. His lungs were struggling to take in enough breath, and his eyes were watering from the pain that was arching its way across his entire chest.

Vader stared back at him in triumph, his yellow eyes ablaze with vengeance. He remembered what it had been like to have his own arm cut off by Dooku, and he knew that the Jedi Master had no way of defending himself now. His own body still ached with a searing pain from the shallow scar across his chest, but he knew that Cin was in much more pain than he.

Then, unexpectedly, Cin spoke. His voice was ragged and chocked, but unnaturally calm as he said, "Your betrayal will hurt you the most, _Vader_…"

Vader just continued to stare down at him, contempt chiseled into his face as he debated whether to finish him now, or leave him to a slow, painful death. Finally, making up his mind, Vader spat, "I'll leave you for the clones."

Then, taking a step forward, Vader kicked Cin directly in the chest with his heel. A pained wheeze was Cin's only response, and then Vader stepped over the dying Jedi Master and continued forward.

Vader walked quickly, despite his pain in his chest, leaving Cin where he was to die a slow and painful death. After a few seconds of walking, he approached the hallway where he had seen the two dead Jedi earlier. Still walking swiftly, he swooped down to the ground and grasped one of the dark grey cloaks that one of the Jedi had worn. He draped it across his shoulders to conceal his battered shirt and then swung the hood up over his head as he continued forward to the elevator at the far end of the room.

After stepping into the elevator and indicating for it to ascend, he withdrew a comlink from his pocket and hastily opened it.

"Commander," he said into the mouthpiece, his voice still raspy and his breathing hard. "Report."

Less than a second passed before Jango Fett's voice came over the comlink and announced, "The entire Jedi Temple is secure from the outside, sir, and the only sections still unchecked are the Upper High Council Chambers and the Room of a Thousand Fountains."

Vader nodded to himself approvingly and then said, "Good work, Commander, and I'll be handling the Upper High Council Chambers myself."

He switched the comlink off just as the door to the elevator slid open, and he then swiftly entered the hallway, his thoughts elsewhere. He marched steadily down the familiar hallways, barely taking notice of any of its many details until he came to the room he had been searching for.

Without pausing for any last thoughts or regrets, he punched in a quick code into the terminal at the side of the doorway where the Jedi younglings would be kept during a period of crisis.

But even as the door slid smoothly open, Vader knew that there was something wrong. Instead of the fear and anxiety that he should have been feeling, he felt only an emptiness that permeated the room.

Vader took a step into the darkened room, casting himself outward in the force to take in the entire room. Sure enough, the High Council Room was completely empty.

A scowl stretched itself across Vader's face as he walked into the center of the room.

_Who?! _Who_ could have gotten the younglings before I got here?! _Who_ could have known that-_

Vader's thoughts ceased as his eyes suddenly focused on a dark cloth draped over one of the High Council chairs. He slowly walked over to the chair and picked the cloth up. It was just a standard Jedi's adult dark brown robe, but something seemed wrong about it. It seemed almost familiar.

Then, stretching into the force, a sudden wave of recognition came over Vader as he realized the owner of this robe.

He had seen the robe not twenty minute before, upon a figure that he knew had perished long ago.

Qui-Gon Jinn.

* * *

Sadly, I must admit, this is the last chapter to my story, and that I had actually planned to take it farther, with the various AU elements (Possible Vos dueling Emperor, maybe? Who knows...) But sadly, I realized that I don't have near enough time to complete it. So, I leave it like so, and I hope you guys enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it. Also, thanks for making it through my almost ridiculously long lightsaber duels.

I also have to say that, when I started writing this, I only planned on writing about a couple of the Jedi during Order 66 and their fates as kind of an advertisement for my first story, Future's Sacrifice (which was basically all Original Characters and had very few reviews) but I have since abandoned that idea and hold this story as a completely different one. If you want to read that story, here's a link- .net/s/5231498/1/Futures_Sacrifice

Again, thanks for everyone who read, reviewed, or enjoyed! And I hope you enjoyed this last installment, even though I couldn't do everything that I wanted to with it.

Also, feel free to ask any questions you might have that I wasn't able to answer in the story!


End file.
